The Loft tool

00:00

Let's now take a look at the Loft command, which is great when you have various sketch profiles and you would like to skin a volume between them.

00:13

Let's go into a new file, top view, snapping is all turned on, millimeters for the unit system. To the toolbar, makes a new sketch, circle from the origin. We make a circle 80 millimeters diameter. Then I zoom out, center my view, exit sketch, go to transform, move, select the circle, turn on copy, and then I type in 200.

00:43

You noticed to get this number, you move over an arrow and then it will come, or you move this up a little bit, and then you can type in 200, zoom out. I turn the copy off, turn the copy back on, 40 millimeters. Click done. Click somewhere else, go back to the Move command, select the circle one more time, and then we move this up by...

01:11

40 millimeters. Now this circle, I would like to edit. So I click on the circle, go into Edit Mode, go to Top View, click on Ellipse, and then I create an ellipse that is somewhat wider and a little bit deeper. Then right click, drop the Ellipse tool, select the circle and delete it. We go into 3D view. And now we have...

01:41

everything for the cap and everything for the body. So we can loft between these sections now. And you will see how beautiful the Loft command works when now you need to do a loft between uneven profiles, which something Extrude or Revolve cannot do. So I call the Loft command. I will start here, the bottom to the top. I loft, that's a straight section in this case.

02:11

Then I would like to hide these sketches. It's later going to be easier to select the underside of this cap when I call the Log command. One more time. I start here. So this is the start, click, click and click, click Done. And then if we go to front view, now you see what we have. It's actually quite nice. Nicely, gently domed.

02:41

Same here. When I select this sketch, the exit, on, there, there is a sketch, exit sketch, and move this one down or up, you see how everything then automatically updates. This is really the power of the Loft command. If I go into edit mode and I change the...

03:09

volume or the proportion of the lips, you see the same.

03:14

We can also go ahead and say, here I started, there I ended. Let's have at the end, nice continuity G2 or G1. There's a different flow of the surface into the neck. Here with G1, we would see a slight highlight change from the body to here. And with G2, you don't really see this.

03:44

But you noticed it's a little bit complicated to control the shape of what I have there. So let me show what we can do in addition. I will hide these two bodies. Then I will show those sketches here. There we are. And what I can do now is the following. In a front view,

04:14

I will create a new sketch. And before I continue, I would like to go back in the top view and show you how all these sketches are perfectly centered along the world center point. That's important. So in this front view, I will now make a new sketch. And then I click on Spline. The control point version is perfect. I go directly to the top, click, and then I click and...

04:43

click, and I go back to the bottom and click, right click, right click, and exit. You see these points are green because the start and end point of the spline, I connected to these intersection points of these rings. I need to have something on the right side. I could draw this manually or here's my Z axis. I could use the Mirror command to make a mirrored copy. Press enter.

05:13

then you will see here, we have these symmetry constraints. We can show here, always show the constraints. So you see them all the time. And what that means is I can now go ahead, move either side, and then it will update the design for me on the other side. So with these two splines, they're called rails. I can do the following.

05:43

I will hide these two sketches for the moment. So it's easier to see. I can call the Loft command and say, you, to you, and then shift left mouse button, click. It's a funny loft, enough to there. And then this other one, click done. And then if I rotate, there you see what we have. It's actually pretty, pretty nice.

06:12

If I select a top sketch, let's make this a little bit smaller there. I would like this center part here to get a little bit more definition. So what I can do now is I will do the following.

06:35

I will actually delete this one. It's in this case, easier. I go to transform, go to move, select this one, make a copy, move this one up a little bit. Then I will click done, go to here. And now I will call the FitPoint Spline curve. So I can click, I can...

07:04

Click, click, click, clicking. You see how I of like drew and kind of like an ellipse a little bit. Right click, say drop. I use this circle simply as a guideline for the distance. Can delete this one.

07:29

You see here, I cannot make the screen. And if I take a look at here is the sketch. Where's my rail sketch? We didn't really talk much about the history yet. This is the rail sketch. So this sketch...

07:46

This one has to be after I made the rails. Now think about the order. They're first, they're created, and now I can draw a new sketch and connect it to those intersection points.

08:06

I would like to have also here a little bit of symmetry. So I will create myself a little bit like a helper. So I will zoom in a little bit. There is the grid. I draw a line this way, and then I will draw a line that way and that way, right click, exit. Actually, I realized this when I don't need.

08:36

This is the center point, so I lock it. And these two, I will select and say, be a construction line. And then I make them equal because these lines are equal. As you can see, I created this a mirror symmetry, but they have to be horizontal and vertical. There. Cool. So now I can make this a little bit wider.

09:05

Beautiful. So let's go ahead. We call the Loft command, go to there, there, there, and then this one and that one, click done. There. Now you see, we created this design here. We have really nice convex shape. And then here, now this is fluted. We don't have something for the cap.

09:36

to very quickly draw this, we can now make a new sketch if we want. I simply draw here a line, quickly draw a line to measure it. That is 200. Wonderful. And what I can do now is say, split this body along this sketch and done there. Wonderful. Let's select everything where we created and put that into a folder and just...

10:07

there so we can see all the new objects we are creating. Let's go to the other side and I'll show you a little bit more what we can do with the Loft command. And I will create a new sketch from the bottom, 240, 40, 40 and over. Thank you. There I will go with...

10:36

40 here too. I will go 30, and then this, will bring over to 30. Triple click all horizontal vertical. We can just do all the constraints.

10:53

You only have to constrain this if it should not change, by the way. Now, I think I will have kind of like a transition there and a transition there. And then here in between, I would like to build something. So I will go and use the Control Point Spline, click, click and click, right click.

11:19

drop this line, and then this line I select and delete it. This was just a visual helper. And then I do the same here. Delete this. Then I draw a line, right click, draw a line, right click. These lines should be horizontal vertical. And what I can do now is I can...

11:46

change or adjust the spacing there that is in between, move these things around a little bit. see now? We, at this point, will select these two parts, select the center part, and then we do a Revolve. Here's my cap. I do a Revolve. And now we need to figure out how do we fill all the stuff in the inside. I will simply...

12:15

hide the sketch because we don't need it anymore. I would also hide this one. So everything is gone. Let's go to a top view for the moment. And I will create here a sketch. say like 40, there we are. Exit, select the sketch, exit. And I make a copy, move this up or alternatively,

12:45

Let me backtrack. We can select these two sketches here, right click and delete. I can also from here create, for example, a sketch. The problem is because I'm attaching this to the surface, so I should have hidden this. Then when I go into top view, making a new sketch, I'm on the ground plane. This is...

13:14

The geometry I see that is fine, but the sketch is down there. That is actually what I wanted. And then I can move this one up a little bit.

13:27

show this part. Okay.

13:31

We want to have a transition from there. So this is smaller. This is bigger. This is smaller. And this is bigger. Actually, then that's the same. So maybe we need one less. So this one I select and make smaller. This one I select and make smaller. And what I will do now is the following. You to you, sorry.

14:00

U to U, Shift left mouse button, click and Loft. I can select this, this and Loft. It doesn't matter what I select because we make linear transitions.

14:14

Very good.

14:17

So this looks very much enough. I could do this also with the Revolve command, but take a look at this. Now we're going to rotate them.

14:31

And I think this is a good example to show you how powerful this is. You see how this widget actually changes rotations. I can move this to the grid or any grid, and now I can perfectly move this up and down, for example. There's that one, maybe a little bit higher up. Oh, we can keep this centered. Wonderful. Perfect.

15:00

And if we then show all the other sketches here again, we can go ahead and start massaging everything a little bit, making this a tick wider, bringing this maybe further down, playing with this, how we would like this design. This is actually quite cool. It's a good example of now what you can do with Loft when you

15:29

skin between different profiles.