Loft & path (exercise in patience)

[321GO]

Hi to you all, hope your're all doing well.

What 'rules' are there to follow when making guide paths for lofts?

Personally i'm having a hard time with these guide paths.
Sometimes I get them to work as intendet, other times i simply cannot get them to 'connect' to the section sketches to have an effect on the actual loft path.

Is there a right and wrong way to 'connect' them for example to section sketches? Where exatcly should they merge?

 

[Sparweb]

Lofts require an intersection between the section sketches and the loft paths, as you well know.
I've had the same difficulty as you.
My current practice (that doesn't mean it's the best) is to define points, either sketch points in the sections or workpoints that are grounded to specific xyz coordinates.
Then build the sketch for the loft path, starting with a 2D work plane defined from the points, sketch on that plane, and "project" the points into the sketch. If making a 3D path you may not need the work plane or the 2D sketch to start, but it might not hurt either.

It's also possible to define all of the work planes first, fix the lines/points to the intersections of the planes, then pick up the points from there. Use those points for every sketch that has section or path lines. I think I was shown that during the training course, so it may be a better practice that the one I first showed.

Of course, with most designs that you figure out as you go, you might not discover a little "kink" in the swoopy path until after you've lofted dozens of other feature elements. Then the fix has to reference geometry attached to the last feature you created. Now you have to make a judgement call.

STF

 

[321GO]

New insights..

I will try 'your' point method, since i used to always used the "project geometry" method before.
What i've noticed is that the project option would sometimes fail when projecting 'complex' features.
(I guess although this sometimes works it does not mean it's the best way to do it)

I also noticed that the guide path would be ignored if it's 'too complex to follow', for lack of better wording.

Again thanks

 

[Sparweb]

"complex features"...

What do they look like, if you don't mind my asking?
Have you tried lofting as surfaces rather than solids?
If doing multiple lofts, have you tried separating the bodies?


STF