Trouble using LOFT!

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

In summary, I am trying to loft between two "lobes". Each pair of lobes is on a different work plane (see image below). The left lobe of one pair should loft with the left lobe of the other pair, and the same thing between the right lobes should occur. However, I'm having trouble completing what I thought would be a farily straightforward task.

The inner design of lobes was drawn with multiple lines between imported points from excel (using the spline function to better approximate the desired shape). The resulting closed loop was then offset 0.5mm outwards (this was done in all four lobes), however, different numbers of lines were used in each (maybe a reason for my problem...?)

I have attached the Inventor file - any and all help is appreciated!

Thanks in advance,

JR

Edited by
Discussion_Admin

[Anonymous]

Hi Curtis,

This also looks great. I see you drew a construction line through all points - also, see you put a rectangular box over this - why was this done?

Would you mind explaining how you achieved this end product? Even if just briefly, I have been trying to understand why the need for two different work planes on top of the regular ones provided at the start. Moreover, I can't see what was filleted. I supressed the features but it gives me an error. 

Also, there's a contraction in between the two sketches? The area becomes slightly smaller and then expands as it lofts between the sketches.

Apologies for the number of questions, I am trying to go through it anyway 

Thanks for the help!

[Anonymous]

JD's approach is great in that it's simple and follows the points, but then again, I don't necessarily have to follow the points as long as the overall design is pretty similar and is a good approximation.

Curtis, your approach seems a little more involved, however, as mentioned above, I do enjoy the end product a lot because it looks neat, clean and well resolved. I do have a a couple of issues as mentioned above, but thought I'd post my comment on both your responses.

Look forward to hearing back from you,

Regards!

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Hi jr12714,

Just a quick note to let you know I did look in on this thread this morning, but don't have much time to address it at the moment. If time permits I'll make a quick screencast video of the steps I took to generate that last version when I get a chance. Hopefully this afternoon.

In the mean time, look for an extrusion feature in the model browser and turn it on, it's a surface extrude feature made from the rectangle in the sketch, extruded up to the work plane you had in place. I applied the fillets to it, and then projected it into 2 new sketches, and then lofted between the two sketches, and used the Area Loft tools to add a section at 25%, 50% and 70%.

I think used the Shell tool to remove the ends and pushed the thickness to the outside of the loft.

Then I used the Move Bodies tool to move the loft solid to be just offset of the origin of the part ( ending up at something like 0mm ,2.5mm, 0mm). I then used the Circular Pattern tool (or Mirror tool, I don't recall which) to create the right hand side copy.

That's all from memory, so hopefully I havn't misstated something that causes confusion. Also keep in mind, those are the steps I came up with at the time, there are probably a couple that could be done some other way, etc.

And just as a tip in might help to turn everything on and then use the End of Part marker to step through the model tree one step at a time to follow the design process. You can just click and drag the End of Part marker.

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[JDMather]

Fooled around with it a bit more.

(see attached)

[Curtis_Waguespack · Accepted solution]

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@Curtis_Waguespack wrote:

... If time permits I'll make a quick screencast video ...

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