Sweep with different radius start/end

[davorin]

Good evening

Will there be a function in the future to define start and end shape with the sweep function?

What I want to achieve is a curved tube with different start end end radius:

Or is there another way to achieve this?

thanks in advance
richard

PS: Would be nice to be able to create nautilus like circular bodies (o;

[TigerMike]

Try Guided Loft.

[davorin]

Well that doesn’t give a result I expect…or…way difficult to create the correct guide line…I assume it only allows one…

[TigerMike]

Here’s a workaround using Sweep.

[TigerMike]

I took my previous example, moved it to one side and made a new body using Guided Loft. They are slightly different but for the most part quite similar.

[TigerMike]

Okay, one last example. I moved the previous lofted body and made a new one.
This shows that the start circle, if changed to a different angle will affect the overall loft.

[davorin]

Seems the scale at the end is the best approach Shapr3D can offer…only works nicely on a single segment path…as soon there are more the scaling has only effect on the last segment:

Still wonder why the loft tool won’t take a path in the middle as guide…is that a restriction others like Fusion 360 face as well?

But then again…nothing beats OpenSCAD in this

[PEC]

Hi Richard,

Actually, you can loft with as many guides as you need, which is a very powerful addition to the original loft function.
So, guided loft if really worth the try, as Mike proposed: it probably does what you were expected.
It doesn’t do middle path guide though so you have to sketch inner and outer guides.
I did them using the “if it looks right, it should be right” rule

With 2 faces and 2 guides, you already get a pretty decent result.

If you want a better cross section all around the part, you have two choices:

• add a third cross section, or
• add a third guide.

I upload the .shapr file if you want to try by yourself.
Loft with different radius start end.shapr (582.6 KB)

ps: OpenSCAD is cool and a very powerful complement to Shapr3D; I use it to create parametric gears’ teeth in dxf file and import them into Shapr3D to build the full part.
Your pipe modeling is great. I wonder how you did it. Did you created various spheres with variable radius around half a circle and hill them all?
What is certain is you can do something very similar with Shapr3D, lofting just 3 faces with 2 or 3 guides.