EngineersRule.com: Boundary vs Loft
For anyone who’s interested, EngineersRule.com just published an article on Boundary vs Loft that I wrote. In the article I plunge the depths of comparison between the two. I even had to go back to the Episodes site to correct a few things after this article.
Did you know that the Boundary surface is the only feature that allows you to use connectors in both directions?
Did you know that Boundary is the only feature that allows you to set the tangency direction of internal profiles?
Boundary is the only feature that allows Trim By Dir 1 and 2?
Both Loft and Boundary allow you to end with a point and make it tangent to round off the end of the feature.
I could give away all the secrets of Loft and Boundary here, but you’d better go over to EngineersRule.com to check it out instead.
Needed the centerline option.
Sorry…double post….thought it would appear at the bottom.
Unfortunately I needed the centerline option which Boundary doesn’t have.
Yeah, centerline lofts are one of those times you can’t use a boundary. You can put a split line on the face that the edge is on. That would probably work for a point to snap to. There are probably a dozen ugly workarounds, like converting the edges to 2d or 3d sketches, and adding points, splitting faces, lofting in sections and using the edge created by the first loft as a guide for the second…
Yeah, ultimately I lofted half then mirrored the other side since it was on the same plane. If it had moved in the z axis, that wouldn’t have worked. Probably could’ve lofted to half circles in that case.
Can you control the connects more precisely? Such as a loft transition from a smaller circle/ellipse to a larger circle/ellipse. The default connector is based on where you select which can introduce a twist. Seems like there should be a “snap to quadrants” option or the ability to define sketch points and use those.
Yeah, you can add sketch points to your sketch and snap to those, or snap to entity endpoints or spline/ellipse points. I wish there were a direct way to drive the connector with a dimension other than using the sketch point. Connectors are great, and for me have replaced multiple guide curves in many (but not all) situations.
What if they aren’t sketches but instead circular edges of extrusions that are tapered? And you want to connect them with curvature to the surface. I have to eyeball the connectors since the edge doesn’t have a point to select.
Most of the time, I eyeball it, but when it needs to be precise, you can use a 3D sketch to place points. The good thing about the point placement is that it will update with dimensional changes. The connector will stay connected to the sketch point as it moves.
Didn’t have much luck since the profiles are edges. The connectors won’t snap to anything on a circular edge profile.
Interesting. That’s one of the differences between a Loft and a Boundary. Try it with a Boundary, and it will work with my technique (snap connectors to 3d sketch points on edges).
Here’s a video link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/43iueayywkvktfp/q.mp4?dl=0