Lofting Shenanigans

[David Thomas]

Having created a loft with 12 profiles in it , naively (how do you spell that word) I consumed my profiles , never to see them again....

 

The next stage of the design called for modifying the profiles to take into account some new 3d geometry , so I thought easy ! just create a section tool (at the same axial location as the each of the loft profiles) on the new geometry and project the edges onto each of the loft profiles.... hmmm not so. There seems to be no way to snap onto the consumed loft profiles and hence position the section tool. Am I missing something, my work around was to write down each of the loft profiles axial coordinates and then position the section tool to correspond to this.

 

There must be better way.......

[Guest bkline]

Open your loft, select all, and copy section in question to the clipboard. Open the triball at the loft section and make sure the triball center is at the intersetion of the red and green lines of the section. Right click on the center of the triball, select edit position. Write down the coordinates. Get out of the edit loft cross section and drag a block into the scene or select insert 2D shape. Select the new block or 2d shape, edit the cross section, delete the existing cross section and paste the loft section from the clip board. You now have a copied loft section with the same reference point as the original loft section. Now open the triball with the pasted loft section, make sure the triball is at the intersection of the blue lines, right click on the center of the triball, edit postition, and type in the values you wrote down from the orginal loft section. Now the new block or 2D profile will be at the same location as the original loft section. How this helps. Its a bit of a pain but it works.

 

Bret Kline