Guided loft
Description: 10 minutes; Lab exercises: 2
hours
Create a surface by moving, or blending, one
or more profiles along a spine and birail curves - without the use of workplanes!
Control the shape of those generated surfaces
by using the Variation Options available in the Guided loft dialog.
Guided Loft is a combination of the Sweep and Loft commands without the need
for multiple workplanes.
The sweep part of the
functionality moves one or more profiles along a smooth spine and automatically
creates intermediate help profiles, which are lofted to create surfaces.
If the spine is made
up of several curves, the curves should have either a tangential or curvature
continuous connect condition.
The spine, profiles, and birails can be 2D or 3D edges. For best results, use
planar profiles that are orthogonal to the spine.
Tips when working with Guided loft:
- Keep the number of profiles low.
The number of
profiles is directly proportional to the "price" of the surface. The more
profiles, the more expensive the price of the surface.
- The option Show help
profiles will show how expensive the surface will become. Use Show help
profiles when working with birails since birails make the surface expensive.
- To create and
place intermediate help profiles onto a spine, the following conditions must
be fulfilled:
- The profiles must be planar edge chains.
- The plane in which the edges of the profile lie has to
be orthogonal to the spine.
If these conditions are not met, some options in
the Guided loft dialog are disabled.
- Use the simplest curves possible.
The best choice is a
spline created by Designer Modeling.
Intersection curves
are expensive because of their dependence on part resolutions.
- Reduce the part resolution to 1e-3 or 1e-4 mm, or, if an
interpolation is not necessary, use the Variation Options to create special
shapes.
The goal is to
create a surface that interpolates the birail curves with the current part
resolution (or the default resolution if an empty part is given).
- Variation Options let you create complex shapes from
simple inputs by scaling, rotating, and changing weights of the profiles to
control how they are blended, and by adding variable offsets to profile
curves.
Lab exercises
These 12 labs will help you understand the options of Guided loft.
Prerequisites
- Knowledge of the Sweep and Loft commands.
- Understanding of profiles, spines, and birails.
A description of each of the options in Guided Loft is available in each lab.
Choose from the following labs: