Lofting an aircraft fuselage

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1

Hi. I’m still struggling with the loft tool.
I have used software called DevFus to create 20 formers for an airplane. The formers are attached to a strongback on a flat table, and cedar strips are placed on the formers and glued to each other. The result is a shell of cedar strips.

So what I’m trying to do is to model the finished product. I have 20 formers spaced 142mm apart, with a cutout to accept the 75x50mm strongback. I can stack these formers on top of each other 142mm apart, but I can’t figure out how to loft between them. I can draw shapes and loft between them. But when I try to do this with two of the formers, Shapr3D tells me this can’t be done. Is this because the formers (imported as DXF file) need to be in a different format?
Aircraft fuselage - all 20 formers.step (2.8 MB)

2

Show us on a video how you trying to loft.

Loft can be done, but I’m not sure this is what you want.

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3

To get better result I would project all these parts and make a loft between projections.

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4

Hi. Projections and then lofting sounds great. But I’m not sure how to proceed with this.
(1) Create plane on surface of a former
(2) Project former onto the plane
then what? I moved the formers out of the way, exposing the planes with the projections on them. Highlighted both projected shapes - but lofting is not an available option…

5

You don’t need to move them, just hide them. Make sure you hide all planes also.

6

It’s a little old, and was made by previus version of S3D , but may be help:

7

Bloody hell… You are SO MUCH better at this than I am! Fascinating to see what you are able to do. I’ll give it a go. Thank you.

1 Like
8

Recently, with newer versions, it is much easier, The “coincidence tool” is my friend😎.
My fuselage is already moulded from composit material, and flying🙃

9

OK, I’ve tried lofting my formers again. I projected each of them onto a new plane, hid the formers AND the planes, and am left with the projections of the formers. The video shows me selecting the loft tool, and then selecting two projections. FAIL.
Any suggestions? What am I doing wrong?

1 Like
10

The problem is in the holes inside your projections. Delete all these holes before lofting.

11

It isn’t clean why this is the case, but OK - If that’s what it is, then I’ll do it. But I need those holes because that’s where the aluminium tube slides in to keep everything aligned on the workbench.

12

OK, I’ve just deleted a single side of the holes, leaving the others intack so that I can rebuild them later. Lofting now OK

1 Like
13

This is how loft is working. It needs surface without holes to calculate.

You can make hole in the future lofted body.

14

Just try to hide…