Noobie trying to loft but ending up with unusable part

[Anonymous]

First off I am a student, new to inventor and cad design. I am trying to make a fan adapter for a heatsink for a computer. I have searched what must be hundreds of threads but I seem to be at a disadvantage b/c I do not understand the lingo or anything other than very basic cad design. I have uploaded my file as it is now, trying to thicken the loft without screwing up the model when I go to 3d print it. I am using inventor professional 2021. This attempt may be going about my goal the whole wrong way so If I need to start over from scratch please let me know what I need to do, and what I did wrong.

[gcoombridge · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous See attached part 

This is pretty tough modelling but my tips are:

• Try to keep a consistent wall thickness across the elements so you can use a shell solid rather than a thicken. The thicken tool will produce edge faces normal to the surface - which is very handy with sheet metal but not what you want here. This is good practice with plastics anyway (more injection molding than 3D printing to be fair). It helps you connect and transition shapes. You'll notice that I built a solid of three forms then shelled it to get smooth transitions.
• Fillet where possible to remove sharp edges in the transitions between square and round profiles. Especially pronounced over a short path...
• Try to keep your sketches and work geometry at the start. This give maximum mobility for re-arranging the tree (something you often need to do when creating complex forms).

Hope that helps anyway

[Anonymous]

I looked at the edited part and first off I want to say thank you sooooo very much for the model! I spent 12+ hours trying to make the other one and couldn't get it to work. As far as your suggestions, I'm sure they are correct, looking at the part you made, however I still struggle to understand what you are suggesting I do next time. For example what is a "shell solid". Also what is a solid of 3 forms and how is it different than what I did? What is "shelling"? Where exactly should I have used the filet tool? How do I keep my sketches and work geometry at the start? and how and why would I re-arrange the tree? I know these are daunting questions but I really have been scouring youtube and these forums and I can't understand. I know what I want my final product to be but I have no idea how to make it. Again I want to say thank you and I appreciate anyone who takes time out of there life to help me out.

[JDMather · Accepted solution]

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@Anonymous wrote:
What is "shelling"? 

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@Anonymous 

See if you can reproduce the Attached step-by-step.

[gcoombridge]

as @JDMather  said the shell solid is a command. By solid of three forms I was just meaning the base neck attached to the flange, the transition and the box at the top - I find it hard to explain these things verbally.

One of the most important skills with inventor (or any parametric feature based CAD) is being able to reverse engineer what has been done in a model. The tree on the LH side of the screen is like a storyboard of all of the actions in the model. Take the End of Part marker and drag it up the list and it will show you how the model develops with each feature. If there are any you don't understand double-click on them and investigate...

[Anonymous]

Yeah, the explanations aren't really helping but that's my inability to understand not your knowledge. I would love to give it another go but I don't even know where to start or what I would do differently. I also find it hard to learn remotely and usually learn things very quickly if I have someone in person to show me and let me ask questions, obviously this past year none of that is happening. I have tried looking at the pop-up help menus but they don't help me understand much. I need someone to explain what these things do in plain english terms but as you said it's extremely hard to do that verbally through text. Thanks again for everyone's help, I will just have to admit defeat.