Creating a Loft Surface
Introduction
A loft surface is a surface that is created by connecting two or more curves.
Currently, you can only create a loft between the curves of meshed objects.
In this tutorial, we’ll create a simple loft surface between the edges of two shell patches.
The Loft Surface Tool
The Loft Surface tool can be found on the Create tab of the Mesh Panel. To create a Loft Surface you need to select the curves that you want to connect. To select curves, first click the curve selection button on the main toolbar. Then click the curves in the order that you want to connect them. The selected curves will appear in the selection box on the Create panel.
Next, select the meshing method to use. The option can be selected under the Selected Curves box. Currently, only a regular triangular mesh or a regular quadrilateral mesh can be created. Then, set the number of element layers to generate, and click the Create button. Choosing the quad and setting the intervals to 10 results in the mesh shown in Figure 3.
Merging the Lofted Surface
Note that the final loft surface is a separate object. It is not connected to the other objects and can be moved independently. If you wish to merge the lofted surface with the other objects, you can do so as follows.
First, select all the objects to be merged. Then, select the menu option Edit \ Merge Objects…, or click the corresponding button on the build toolbar. A dialog box appears that allows you to set the name of the merged object. Make sure to check the Weld option and, if necessary, adjust the weld tolerance. Then, click OK to merge the objects. The final merged object is shown in Figure 4.
