- [Instructor] The loft command allows me to take one sketch
and then morph that sketch into the next, and so on.
We can actually have multiple sketches,
and we can morph that shape through as many as we'd like.
Let me show you the most basic example here.
So I've got a sketch already defined right over here.
And right above it,
actually, right attached to it here is another little line
which we'll show you in a little second.
But I need another sketch up above this one,
so I can transform this initial sketch here into the next.
So what I'm going to go ahead and do
is just go ahead and create a plane,
which is directly above this top plane.
All right. So I'm going to come up here under Features,
come over here to Reference Geometry,
come over to Plane,
and let's just go ahead and drag a plane
or just type in a value here and type it in.
So it's a little bit higher up than there. Click OK.
And there's my new plane.
So I'm going to start on that plane, start a sketch.
And this time, I'm going to just create
a really basic rectangle or actually a square.
So here's my center point rectangle.
And I'm going to make that rectangle,
so it turns into a square by making both sides equal.
And then let's go ahead and just add a dimension
from the original sketch here to this one.
And I'll say that's 1.5. Okay.
Now notice, we've got four corners of this part
and four of the other base sketch,
so it's going to be a pretty straightforward
and simple loft command.
So now that I'm out of that,
I've got this sketch here
which is defining the ending point.
And then I have Sketch2
which is going to be used in a second.
And then Sketch1 is the original sketch here.
So, okay. So come up to the Feature ribbon bar
and click on Lofted Boss or Base.
And my profile,
so I'm going to start with my profile on the bottom.
So I'm going to twirl this down,
I'm going to say sketch number one's going to be my first profile
and sketch number three is going to be my ending profile.
So just that easily,
it was able to create a loft between those two shapes,
and it looks pretty good.
When you're happy, click on the green check mark,
and there you have your very first loft.
Now I'm going to go ahead and hide that plane.
All right. And there's our loft.
Now we can also go back and modify
how this logic feature works.
So come back over here to the loft.
Now notice over here, we have this thing
called starting and ending constraints.
If you click on that, notice we have, it says none,
and we also have the option for doing a direction vector
or normal to profile.
So let me show you normal to profile first.
So click on that one there,
and it gives me this value
or this little handle I can pull up,
and that affects the shape.
So you can get some really wild shapes
by dragging this handle up,
'cause it's defining how much control
that normal force has on our shape.
So we can make it billow out a little bit,
like you see here.
If you wanted instead to change it to a direction vector,
you could choose a vector.
So in this case here, I can choose something like that,
and it's going to be pushing it out to the side,
and that's going to be controlling the shape a little bit
as I go.
So you can also type in a value here if you'd like to.
But if I switch back over here to normal to profile,
again, I can change this value here
if I want to have more or less control
as well as rotating it around,
so that's going to be the angle of the draft of it.
So I can say like something like five,
and notice it's going to push that out just a little bit more,
because of the five degree draft that I'm adding to it.
So a couple things you can do there.
We also have the option to use guide curve.
Now guide curves are sketches
that define the outside profile
when you're transitioning from one sketch to the next
in the loft feature.
We're not going to be doing that in this example,
but I do want to point out that that's available.
So notice that is the basic example
of how to use a loft feature
and some of these starting and ending constraints.
We also can add that same thing over here,
like normal to profile,
and we can adjust it like that, okay?
Click OK when you're done.
Let's grab that next example.
Over here, we've lofted from a square
into a six-sided shape up here.
So we get a hexagon at the top.
And notice, it doesn't line up perfectly.
You've got this one big face over here,
you got a big face over here.
And then this face here is split,
and this face over here is split,
and it's not even.
Right? So one of the main things you got to focus on
when you're creating lofts
is that both of the shapes have the same amount of points.
That way, you can connect a point to a point.
So let me show you how to fix this common problem.
So let's go ahead
and actually just delete this feature all together,
get rid of the loft.
Then come down here to my original sketch.
Now the top shape has six sides.
We need to turn this shape here
into a six-sided shape as well.
And I can do that pretty easily
by clicking on these outside lines here.
And I can say these lines, I'd actually like to have them,
so they're construction, right?
And let's go back and look at our other shape.
So notice this point here, we want to connect over here,
and this point here, we want to connect over here.
So that's what we're trying to modify here.
So now what I want to do is I'm going to create a center line,
and I'm going to snap from this point all the way over to here.
And there's a couple different ways we could do this,
but this is a pretty straight forward.
Just make a couple of lines on each side here
that are going to be on top of the existing lines.
So now these are individual line segments,
so here's that segment there, here's that segment there.
And we still have a square, right?
But it's made up of individual line segments
that make up six,
and that's all we need.
Exit out of that.
Now, when we come back over here,
we're going to create that loft again.
So I'm going to choose the loft command.
I'm going to go ahead and choose this initial shape
and then my final shape.
And then notice they connect together.
However, it's still twisting, and that's not what I want.
So what I need to do is grab this little green dot here.
And instead of there, I want to connect it over here.
So you can rotate that around if you want to.
But now we have what we want, right?
We have, it is symmetrical shape.
It's splitting both sides here correctly.
And it's looking pretty good.
All right, click OK.
And there is our new modified shape.
So just remember,
you always want to make the same amount of segments
on each section or each profile of your lofted shape.
All right.
My last example here is a three profile loft.
Notice I've already done a little bit of work ahead of time.
So I've got the shape at the bottom,
and it has six sides.
Over here, we also have six sides.
And then we have a circle.
And I've taken that circle,
and I've divided it up into individual little segments
so that each one of those can connect together.
Okay? So let's go up here to the loft command again.
This time, as far as my profiles,
I'm going to start with the bottom one.
Then I'm going to go over here to the middle one.
And notice that's rotating around.
We don't want that to rotate like that,
so let's pull that back over here,
so we're fixing it as we go.
And then we can add in that last one, right?
And whoa, we're getting some really wild things here.
And hey, this might be what you want, right?
I mean that is possible
that we could have a shape that looks like that.
If you want to twist it, you can.
But in this case, I didn't want to twist it,
so I want to bring that back.
So you can grab those little control handles
and spin them around,
so they snap into these other points.
And once you have it looking good,
you can then, of course, click on the green check mark.
Now, if you wanted to control the outside shape here
a little differently,
that's when you can add in those guide curves.
And you might go ahead and do that at this point in time
by coming over here and starting a sketch
like something like on the front plane.
So I'm going to come over here and click on the Sketch.
Start a sketch.
And now let's go ahead and change this over,
so we're looking at it just as a wire frame.
So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to create spline
that's going to snap.
Oh, let's grab it, there it is, there's our spline command.
We're going to snap from this bottom face here,
and we're going to come up here and snap there.
So notice I'm not touching anything there at all.
But I do want to show these sketches,
so I'm going to go over here and show of them all,
so you can see what we're connecting to.
Now I want to grab that point there
which is not connected right now, okay?
Hold down Control and grab that line,
and I want to say Pierce,
so now those are touching.
Same thing over here is I have this control handle here.
I want to grab that point,
and I want to Pierce it into that sketch,
so they're touching.
And then finally up here,
I want to grab that line and the end point.
Again, I don't want to Pierce that together.
So now I have a line controlling the outside shape.
Now this might not be exactly the profile you wanted,
but you can also grab these little handles here
and modify things to make your outside shape
look a little different.
Now we can have one guide curve,
or we can have a hundred.
It doesn't really matter.
You can have as many guide curves as you like
to put into your design.
So let's go ahead and exit out of there.
Now, what I want to do is,
because this sketch here is below my loft,
I won't be able to use it.
So what I need to do is I need to delete the loft
and then recreate it with this guide curve.
So Features,
come over here to loft.
My profiles, I'm going to start down here,
profile number one,
and then it's going to be profile number two.
Let's fix that rotation issue again.
Grab the point right there.
All right. And then the third shape.
Again, fix the rotation issue right there.
And then let's jump over here into the guide curves.
And the guide curve I want to use
is this one right over here.
And just that easily,
I was able to apply that guide curve
to contour the shape the way I want,
and then click on OK.
And then finally, let's just go back
and switch that back to a regular mode.
So as you can see, the loft command is very powerful.
And there's a lot going on there.
In fact, you can make these very, very intricate,
complicated lofts with multiple, multiple profiles
and different guide curves and really control that shape.
But I definitely recommend that, you know,
spend your time making the profiles and the guide curves.
And as the very last thing,
go back and try to create the loft
'cause it can also cost a lot of issues,
because there's so much going on with this tool.