Lofted body

hello! i am trying to make a bean-shaped lofted body. i created a small ellipse at the top and bottom of the shape, two spline side rails in the front view, and two spline side rails in the right view. as far as i can tell all the endpoints of the splines are snapped to the ovals (white dot inside at each point.) when i select all six elements, i don’t see loft appear as a tool option. could someone help me resolve this? thank you!

here is a link to a video of what i see: https://youtu.be/UdMPxRaw87w

Here’s a different approach using Loft. I made two ellipses at 90deg and replaced one half of one ellipse with a spline. This method is quite tricky because small variations in the spline will create an invalid body.

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You can always use “Search” and select Loft from there. But chosen approach won’t give you required shape. You’ll get something like that:

But if you want something like that:

Then it’s easier to revolve oval and just subtract the part.

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@TigerMike and @Xdrakosha thanks so much for your responses! i think the revolve oval approach could work. i am a beginner so i may be missing something. i selected the plane, created the ellipse in sketch, made an axis line, chose revolve / selected the ellipse + the axis, saw the shape, but when i completed the action i got an error message. what am i doing wrong? here is a video: https://youtu.be/QFyIr0KnjiI thank you!!

It should divide your ellipse.

You must select half of the ellipse.

I agree with @Xdrakosha that using Revolve is a better way to go. Here’s an example.

i appreciate your help @TigerMike and @Xdrakosha! i am getting the kind of shape i was looking for, which is great. is there a way to mesh them together so you don’t see the the lines from the subtract and fillet actions?

Look at them in the Visualization mode and the lines will likely be gone. Also Zebra stripe mode.

The lines represent boundaries of the operations.

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Save as .stl and import to the project :slight_smile:

If you are worried about lines, mesh will contain hundreds or thousands of lines!

:melting_face: