How To Use The Loft Command For Creative Effect | Autodesk Inventor

hello and thank you for coming along to my invent to toriel which i've cheesy and somewhat regrettably called get loft and get creative the name of the tutorial is based upon the primary tool which I'll be using in this guide which is the loft command which you'll find in the part environments ribbon bar now the loft commands been invented for quite some time I believe I want to say it came out in a runnable release ten that's not 2010 that's a release ten which is about 2008 I want to say ish um so it's been uh for quite some time however I found on my travels that not a lot of people have used it they've not dived into it you know when they go about you know self teaching themselves the the stumble across it maybe open it up and go with bloody ostrich crush forget that so yeah I found not a lot of people use it now if you have used it then good for you so it begs the question what you're watching this fall but you know you might learn something maybe but yeah it's it's quite a good commander it allows you to get creative with various different shapes and forms what it does is it takes to sketch profiles and it will blend a solid between to sketch profiles now those sketch profiles can be of any shape any size and any place within reason and it will blend a solid between those two shapes now you can sort of let your imagination run wild with this a bit you can create all sorts of funny forms and create kind of shapes it's used for product design mostly or you know you could use a4 sheet metal four squared around says the image depicts but you know there is a there's a sheet metal function for that which I'll not get into but yeah so as I get through this tutorial I'll be showing you other different areas of inventor which I'll be using to get to the end point which is to create a lofted shape and hopefully you'll you know you may pick up some thickness I'll go through and I'll be explaining what I'm doing as I go through so I'm starting with an empty part file there's nothing going on in here whatsoever and I'm going to start by creating a 2d sketch in a completely empty part file I'm going to sketch on the XY plane now I'm using inventor 2015 if you are using an earlier release event you may not see these work planes these construction planes appear in the centre of the screen if you don't don't worry about too much if you want to get on the XY plane as I am doing here you can expand the origin fold it down here and then pick it in there everything that I do in here you should be able to do in an early release of inventor so you don't have to have released 2015 so sketch on the XY plane and here we go now to create my solid that I'm going to end up creating I'm not going to be sort of taking the shortcut and you know playing the EZ card here I'm not going to be creating primitive circles and rectangles and squares I want to get a bit more funky with things I'm going to be using a spline tool which this which allows you to create so non-standard shapes to create sort of weird and funky products with so there's a number of different splines now the one I'll be using is the interpolation spline which basically so a fancy word for saying you draw some point and it bisects a spline between those points now the best advice I can give you for creating splines is to not just click random points like this and hopefully you know in a hope for the best that you get a nice symmetrical lovely shape to work with because you'll end up spending the rest of your life dragging points around and that doesn't look right let's move out here smooth that down here that's still not quite right where's the bottom point there and you move this along here and it start to do yeah it's not the best approach to sort of randomly do on the fly the best advice I can give you is to plot out where you want you you may just spline points to be first before you create your spline and you do that using the point tool here in the sketch Rivenbark so select point and then pick some approximate points where you want your splined it intersect now I want to kind of egg shaped kind of spline going on so I'm going to create for spline points and they're all going to be based around the center point what I want is my profile to be symmetrical around the center point because the center point is going to become quite important later on I'm going to use this for a path which I will explain a bit more about later on so I've got these points here these are kind of just floating around in space they're not constrained if you've been working with square sketches quite a lot you'll know what not constrained means it just means that they've got no dimensions they're not fixed in space and they're not referencing anything else in the part environment they're just sort of free to flow about so I need those to be constrain I need tell inventor where I want them to be so I can use the standard 2d constraint planner which is up here and I can use the dimension tool so I'm going to get started by just making this bit more structure I want to make things a bit I you know in line and a bit more rigid so create the horizontal constraint pick that and then select these two points here which will line those two points of horizontal so when I grab and move these two sort of move up down with jokers they're horizontally fixed together I want to do the same but vertically for the top and the bottom points just gets to confirm what that's done how to make sure that those two points and I'll vertically in line with each other I'm gonna create another vertical constraint and make this point here vertically constrained with the center point of the part that will align both points up to the sat on that central axis running through the part file super right well what next okay well the next thing I want to do is make sure that these points are symmetrical around the center line how do I do that well you could just create a dimension say maybe make it to mention from there there say make that 10 and then put another dimension I'm putting you the screen there you can see my own but you kind of but maybe put a dimension there of 10 and then make another dimension from here to there is 10 but that's not really best practice the best way to go about doing that is to give yourself in sent lines to work with so you can say project geometry and then you can use these axes the reason for this being such a good idea is these axes these axes will never ever change they'll never move they'll never you will never vary they're all with their fixed constant throughout the part file so grab those axes now once you've projected them and then select them and then convert them into construction lines now that doesn't really serve any purpose other than it just makes them a bit more sort of out of focus they're not so prominent on your screen anymore so now that you've got this sent line here what we can then do is create a symmetrical constraint which is this one here and then pick these two points pick that point then that point and then this axis and then that will make these two points symmetrical around that axis we great right you can do the same thing symmetrical constraint between this point here this point here and then this center line here and then that will do the exact same thing make these two points symmetrical around that axis so now we've got that done the next thing we can do if you want to is plate some dimensions that would be quite alright now that everything's symmetrical to create a spline between these points but if you are designing a product you might want to put some dimensions on at this point so you know what kind of size you're working with so can maybe create you know a dimension from here to here and make this you say 25 you might want to put a dimension from here to here and make that 30 whatever it doesn't matter I'm just so making this up as I go along if I'm honest and then make that 110 now all those sketch points have gone blue when a sketch line goes blue it does I don't want to go it get into too much depth but depending on the color scheme you're working with the can go a different color but when they do change color and go to a darker color generally means that the constraint and when the constraint it means the car move need ragam and they don't move anywhere right now that I've got those points I'm happy with those points I'm going to select the drop-down list here I'm going to select interpolation spline now the bizarre thing about this and again I don't get into much detail but when you select spline and you start spline ink to the points the start point does kind of make a difference now if you look what I've done there I'll start at this point and I've gone clockwise and I've got this or bizarre off egg shape here in no good no good at all so what I want to do is go back to the spline command start at the bottom point and then kind of go anti-clockwise and then even I'm going through the exact same points look at that I have got a lovely symmetrical egg-shaped spline which I'm happy with and I say I don't want to get into the detail of why it's different but you know 10 10 is starting a symmetrical center point and then go around if it doesn't work out quite right start at a different point and I try again if you if you quite confident that your points are all in the right place everything symmetrical you know just keep trying start at the right point and just keep trying okay so that's my first profile done that's the first profile that I'm going to use with the loft command I'm going to finish the sketch now the next thing I want to do is create a path now the path is going to be it's going to kind of be like a center line that the Lots going to go through you can loft between two profiles I could just draw another egg-shaped profile here and just loft in a straight line between two points but you can also loft and tell it to follow a curvy path if you want what do I mean by that right well I'm going to create a sketch and I'm going to sketch on this plane here which is because I've made everything symmetric around that center point this plane here runs smack bang through the center of the sketch it is effectively a center line for just turn running see there I'm sketching on this plane here which is central through that sketch okay I want to create another I want to create center line now you get it totally depends on what you're doing it alright obviously I can't explain every eventuality of sketch line that you can create so what I'm going to do is create another spline I'm going to start at this point here and I'm going to come maybe here and then down to let's say there that'll do that's going to be the center line for my loft profile however if you look at the where the spline comes out with the profile can you see it sort of bends up before it goes down that's not good I wanted to come out perfectly normal from the sketch plane I want it to be a smooth transition out and then down because if I do loft a profile along this line it's going to kind of go up and then it's going to go down it's not going to terminate against this sketch profile kind of perpendicular or normal to that Sketchup tip so we need to sort that out now there's a number of ways to do that again like everything in card there's a number of different ways of doing this but to find the best way to do it is to look at the handle of the spline what they're bloody hell is the hand of the spline you'll I'll tell you what it is if you select the endpoint of your spline you get this little line appear here now that's the spline handle if you try and select it it's going to troll you it's going to vanish right so what you do is you select the dot right click and then you activate that handle now these are the green dots here if you pull a handle you'll see you're modifying how the spline behaves at that point now I don't want to get too technical with this I just want to keep it simple so effectively what I'm going to do is make that spline handle horizontal so you select the horizontal constraint select that spline handle and way look at that it's not actually horizontal because this sketch has been flipped it's actually vertical which is a bit mind-boggling but no mine make that spline handle vertical and now you can see if we just exit the handle it now comes out perfectly normal from the sketch plane because handle is flatline through the through the sketch profile lovely lovely Jolie right I'm quite happy with that profile I'm going to finish that sketch and the next thing I need to do is to create my second profile the one back to go and do start the loft this is the termination profile I want to create a new profile around about here how do I do that I've got nothing to sketch on well I need to create a work plane how do I create a work plane which is going to be exactly where I needed to be on the end of this line kind of making sure it's going to blend smoothly into this path right well the way you do this is you select the work plane command pick the end point of this line which should appear and there you are and then pick the line itself and it will give you a work plane which is perfectly normal to that spline to test that this is actually adaptive and it's going to move with the spline you can pick up the end of that line move this to say here it's not a booted right we'll click the Update button here and it will move there you go see your work planes always going to be perfectly normal to the end point of that line happy days next thing to do is to create your sketch on this work plane and then it will move the camera so it's looking straight down on the work plane now we're not going to worry too much about what's going on down here we're going to be worried about what's going on up here okay next thing you do is just to create another shape now this could be anything you want it could be just a square could be just a circle it could be anything you want but I'm going to create another spline so I'm going to create points here point there find up here another one there another one the one about there I'll do okay and I've got to go through the rigmarole again of making sure all the points line up the reason I'm doing that is because if it's an off shaped spline if it's not symmetrical you're going to start your loft in a bad way the profile that you start the blend from is going to be off-center and you're just going to get this this horrible ugly looking solid blending into it it was into another profile she's going to look awful so let's start by doing the the horizontal constraints between here and here and then here and then yeah do that do that one yes it did okay all right and then we'll do a vertical constraint treat yeah yeah and nothing to pick there's nothing to pick there so what we're going to do is project the jhumri of the center point and that give us a point which will allow us to vertically constrain that point to point good times right for the sent lines to make everything symmetrical I'm kind of now off the pot axis I'm not kinda like away from the center point of the part so I can't really project the axes now so an easy way to make yourself some sent lines is to just start the line command make it a construction line and then enjoy yourself a scent line going across here and then enjoy yourself a center line going up there and then we can use this magical constraint to make that one and that one symmetrical to Dart so again just repeat what we did we fall upon and that one symmetrical should done that yep that's working like a treat and then there was no clumped on those ones yeah so we'll make that one that was metrical around the sent line great days okay right so for the size of this profile now I want this to be a bit larger than that profile I want it to be sort of a larger shape blending down it with smaller shape so just to get the size approximately right in the first instance I can sort of move these points over here and move those points over there and if I wanted to I could put some dimensions on am I bothered about those not really but I'll make the center ones symmetrical so we'll say four and then there yeah well that's symmetrical so it's going to be okay right the next thing I'm going to do is my spline so I'm going to start by doing the exact same thing as it did before the interpolation spine I'm going to start at the bottom and then spline out to here through here through there to that point that point and back to the start and just made a construction line so we'll just select that and then and take that okay so there's our profile it's a bit funky look and you can grab the handles if you want to move it around pull it around to make it a bit more specific if you want it to look a little bit different like I say your dimensions if you are if you are designing a product you would put dimensions are there but I'm not overly fussed for the purposes of this tutorial I'm quite happy with that so I'll finish the sketch now just to make things a bit more visually appealing on a switch off that work plane because I don't like how my work planes in my face once I finish with them turn that off right that's it done so the next thing I'm going to do is to create the loft what I'm trying to achieve here is to blend this profile into this profile but I'm going to run it along this path here so we'll create a loft and the curves are going to be the sections click do ad so we're going to go from here to here now as you can see I haven't selected that little line going to the middle of there so it's going to do and as the crow flies blend from one shape to the other which is fine that's absolutely fine but I wanted to follow the scent line I wanted to blend and curve along that scent line so I'll then select this one here which I've said probably enough already which is the center line and then you select the sketch which is going to be this one here not great so it's going to blend those two profiles together along that center line and you go ok and then look at that look at what you can do looks absolutely fantastic well it looks a bit drab actually because it's just in grey but then you can sort of go into your colors and go to the you know the salesman's dream which is the chrome polished shiny that is looking good now if you are in product design one of the one of the good and again under use aspects of in vendor is the zebra analysis utility which allows you to inspect the surface quality of your models so it's visually just looking at this yeah it looks pretty smooth it looks all good looks funky in hunky-dory if you select a zebra button here which is on the inspect tool you can mess about with the density and whatnot but select ok and it turns your model into this sort pinstripe zebra contour and that just lets you inspect surface quality so if there are any sort of weird off symmetrical maybe surface breaks in the model maybe the loft didn't quite go perfectly symmetrical you'd see that immediately in these zebra and now sis but as you can see it is absolutely smack bang perfectly symmetrical okay so just taking that one step further I saw got this blue peter job going on here in the background so this profile here in this profile here that's pretty much the same sort of just create but then I've created an additional couple of profiles here finishing with just a single point now they're just they've been created in the exact same way as mother is the last example was just a profile on an angle ascent line another profile and these ones here we just saw of offset profiles from that one they are the same in the same angle so with the loft command not only can you go from here to here following sort of a guide rail if you like which gives you this you can then create additional loft you don't even need a sketch for actually you can pick a solid face and then schedule a lot from here to here to here and your loft through multiple points and it will you know you can come up with some really quite creative shapes it all depends on the inputs that you give intended to work with right couple of other things just to finish this off this loft coming out of here you can see there is you don't even need the zebra analysis to look at it you can see there's a clear sort of defamation there in the surface it's not a smooth transition from one profile or the other but just for clarity I'll switch this on you you can see there that's what the zebra is showing up that there's a clear break in the surface so how do we get shot right well I'm going to go back into the loft which I've just the last loft that I created which is loft 9 in the browser edit that feature and then go to the conditions and other conditions again I don't want go into too much detail so stop short will be in a training course but this this edge here this is the transition between the first profile and the room the rest of the loft so you've got a number of different conditions you can work with the free condition just means the profiles coming straight directly out the loft comes straight directly out at the sketch profile if we make this a smooth g2 condition it will blend it will try its hardest to blend the profile normal to the sketch that is coming out from there's still a tiny bit of a break there but it's a hell of a lot smoother than it was if you go back to zebra you can see its meter it's made a big difference it's not quite perfect that's probably look the more work to do there but it's it says it's better than it was before happy well alright and the final point I've blended the final point of the loft into a sketch point now you can see here it's sort of terminating an absolute razor sharp point which good luck trying to manufacture that and getting it past any safety audits but go back into the loft edit the feature go back to the transitions in this point sketch here this is the final point where the lots terminating at if I select this drop-down arrow here it knows that it's blending into a sketch point so it lets you toggle how the loft ends on the point now you can change it to say tangent loft into a tangent points will sort of make a smooth spherical termination point and you can increase the weight of that tangent point like so you sort of try to narrow just you know bump it up a bit add a bit extra weight there and we've got something much more manageable to manufacture and as you can see it's a rather cheap so 10 pence disposable razor okay so that's the loft command I hope you found that useful like I said a lot a lot of people have used that before but as you've seen the processes I've gone through you can use any shapes you want you can create any sketch shapes and sketch profiles any scent lines you want any distance in any size and you can create literally anything you want using the loft command the world's our oyster depends on what your imagination can do and also as I've shown is the spline command a couple of tips and tricks on how best to get the spline command to work for you and the zebra analysis tool and a couple of the transition effects which you can use within the loft command thank you very much for checking this out if you did find it useful apologies is quite a long one but you know these things do take time you kind of slowly kind of figure out inventor in two minutes it does it's quite involved but thanks for thanks for patience stick it out until the end if you did like the video press the like on the video that would be great it helps me out I'm just getting started so help me create some more videos get them shared around a bit and put some comments in if you've got any questions I'll be happy to answer them thank you very much for your time and good luck playing around well thank you

Channel: Tech3D

Views: 135,699

Keywords: Autodesk, Inventor, Tips and tricks, Tips, Tricks, Training, Tutorial, Guide, 2015, 2014, CAD, 3D modelling, 3D, 2D, Solidworks, Interface, Windows, Loft, Splines, Spline, Constrain, Sketch, Best Practice, Solid, Model, Part, Assembly, Drawing

Id: A3MniXS0YxY

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 11 2014