Guided loft: Create a surface using unidirectional scaling

Description: 5 minutes; Lab exercise: 20 minutes

When using birails to create a guided loft surface, use Unidirectional to scale the profiles in two specific directions.

Lab exercise

Using one birail

  1. Save the file unidirectionalScalingWithOneBirail.pkg on your system.
  2. Load the unidirectionalScalingWithOneBirail.pkg file.
  3. Click Surfacing .
  4. Click Guided Loft in the Create Face section.
  5. Show the coordinate system (Press F3 on your keyboard).
  6. Select the line as the Spine.
  7. Select the curve as the Profile Edges (Z direction).
  8. Select the wavy curve as the Birail Edges.
  9. Click Preview.
  10. Rotate the model so that you are looking at the top of the model.
  11. Choose Isotropic from the Scale drop-down menu. The profile is scaled in all directions with respect to the spine.
  12. Now, choose Unidirectional from the Scale drop-down menu. The profile is scaled in a direction determined by the distance between spine positions and corresponding birail positions.
  13. Pick a scaling option and click to complete the operation.

Isotropic option

Unidirectional option

Using two birails

  1. Save the file unidirectionalScalingWithBirails.pkg on your system.
  2. Load the unidirectionalScalingWithBirails.pkg file.
  3. Click Surfacing .
  4. Click Guided Loft in the Create Face section.
  5. Show the coordinate system (Press F3 on your keyboard).
  6. Select the line as the Spine.
  7. Select the curve as the Profile Edges (Z direction).
  8. Select the two curves (X direction) as the Birail Edges.
  9. Click Preview.
  10. Rotate the model so that you are looking at the Y direction.
  11. Choose Isotropic from the Scale drop-down menu. The profile is scaled in all directions with respect to the spine.
  12. Now, choose Unidirectional from the Scale drop-down menu. The profile is scaled in a direction determined by the two points where the profile plane intersects the birails.
  13. Pick a scaling option and click to complete the operation.

Isotropic option

Unidirectional option