- In this video, I'm gonna go through and teach you
how to use the lofted surface command.
Now as you can see on the screen,
we've got a lot going on here so I wanna break this down
into some manageable pieces
that we can understand.
First things first, you see I've got a picture
of a mouse here on the screen.
Now I just took a mouse off my desk
and took a picture of it,
and I figured this is a great product
to start doing some surfacing on
'cause everybody's pretty familiar
with the shape and look of a mouse.
So to get started, let's go ahead
and take a look at my initial sketches.
So I'm gonna go up here and I'm gonna drag
the History bar all the way back
to the very beginning, and you can see here is
the basic shape I have.
and I've got the top plane.
I'm gonna go ahead and hide that for right now
so hide this one, and there's my sketch.
Let's go ahead and take a look at it.
So Edit Sketch, and you can see here
I've got a couple things as far as just
laying the thing out.
I've got a couple radiuses defined.
I've got some widths defined.
Different radiuses here, lengths overall,
and I got these measurements
just by using a ruler and a caliper
just to get some rough shape of the mouse
so I can draw a simple profile of the bottom of it.
Once I've done that, I also added in
these two other construction lines here and here.
And we're gonna create some construction planes
off of those lines and hinge them
around these construction lines here.
Okay, once that looks good,
go ahead and exit back out.
The next thing I want to do is I want
to bring in a sketch.
So you can see here I have Sketch7,
and that is on the front plane here.
And make sure we bring that back into view
so there it is.
Now on the front plane, I've started
sketch number seven and I've brought in
this picture of the mouse which I just shot
on the side profile.
What you're gonna wanna do to start
to sketch a picture is go over to Sketch.
Make sure you're editing the sketch,
and then come up to Sketch Picture.
Now you might or might not have this icon
on your Sketch toolbar.
If you don't happen to have that icon,
right-click on any one of these tabs here
and go down to Customize Command Manager.
Go over here to Commands and come down to Sketch.
It'll show you all the available Sketch tools.
And here is Sketch Picture.
You can just drag that right up here
and dock it into your toolbar here.
And if you already have it, which I do,
I can just drag that right back out.
Once it's there, click on OK,
and then Insert Sketch Picture.
It's gonna go out to your desktop
and find whatever picture you're looking for to bring in.
I already have it here.
If I double-click on it actually,
I can then move this around.
Sometimes the scale of this thing
gets a little bit weird so when you rotate it,
it gets a little bit funky as far as
how you are moving it around 'cause the center
is the center of this huge picture now.
I'm going to scale it basically
so that the bottom line here
of the measurements that I actually took
lines up with the bottom of the mouse.
Once everything looks OK, click on OK
and there it is.
Exit out, and there's my shape.
Now I'm gonna create two planes.
My first plane here looking directly
at the side of the mouse,
and I'm just gonna line it up
with that bottom line here.
And then my secondary plane, again,
is the second line up here.
And all I'm doing to create these planes
is just using that line we're gonna hinge on
and the top plane, setting up the angle
so they all line up.
There they are.
Next, we're gonna go ahead and create
a couple of other sketches here.
So I'm gonna hide the picture of the mouse
for right now, and I'm gonna start
just looking at this sketch here.
So I'm gonna hide these two things.
And this one here, all I did was start a sketch
on that new plane I have.
I offset the original entities a little bit
and I just moved it around.
So if I take a look at the sketch,
it's undefined at this point in time.
Like I said, I just offset it
and then moved it slightly.
That's the first one.
Now we wanna create a couple
of other guide curves.
If I was to create the loft without the guide curves,
it would just be a straight section
and I'll show you that right now before we do that.
But I did wanna point out where my guide curves are.
So here's my first guide curve.
Again, it's just on the ...
Probably think the front plane right here,
and then my second guide curve Sketch6
is a tiny little one right here at the front.
Just adding a little bit of curvature to that.
So those are the four different curves
we're gonna use to create this loft.
All right, now jump up to Surfaces.
Go over to Lofted Surface, and as far as
my profile so I wanna go from this one here
to that one there.
And as soon as I do that, notice what I get.
I got a straight lines on both sides.
Looks pretty good, but I wanted to have
a little bit more curvature to that,
and that's why I wanna add in
these guide curves here.
So under Guide Curves, I'm gonna choose
my first guide curve right over here.
And as soon as I do that, notice it just
bends that out just a little bit,
but it also affects it all the way around the shape.
But down on this side here,
notice it's actually bending it the other direction.
We don't really want it going that way.
That's why we want to add in that other guide curve.
So then I click on the other guide curve here,
it brings it out.
Now you've got a nice smooth shape
all the way around the bottom section of that mouse.
Once everything looks OK, click on OK,
and those are the basics
for creating a lofted surface.
And you can see if I go back and I turn on
this sketch here, Show,
it's showing me the very bottom
of where that mouse is.
That's gonna be the cup of where it is.
Now, keep in mind that this is a 2D sketch,
and now I have a 3D shape directly below it.
Hide that, there's my shape again.
So to review, the basics for creating
a lofted shape is you're gonna have
two basic profiles or sketches
that you're gonna loft from one to the other.
Then you can add in as many guide curves
as you'd like to contour the shape
from one profile to the other.