SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Part II: Building Intelligence into Your Parts

FIGURE 7.9

The Loft PropertyManager

Entities that you can use in a loft ...................................................................

For solid lofts, you can select faces, closed loop 2D or 3D sketches, and surface bodies. You can

use sketch points as a profile on the end of a loft that comes to a point or rounded end. For surface

lofts, you can use open sketches and edges in addition to the entities that are used by solid lofts.

Some special functionality becomes available to you if you put all the profiles and guide curves

together in a single 3D sketch. In order to select profiles made in this way, you must use the

SelectionManager, which is discussed later in this chapter.

The Sketch Tools panel of the Loft PropertyManager enables you to drag sketch entities of any pro-

file made in this way while you are editing or creating the Loft feature, without needing to exit and

edit a sketch.

Note
I discuss 3D sketches in more detail in Chapter 31.n

The similarities between lofts and splines ......................................................

The words loft and spline come from the shipbuilding trade. The word spline is actually defined as

the slats of wood that cover the ship, and the spars of the hull very much resemble loft sections.

With the splines or slats bending at each spar, it is easy to see how the modern CAD analogy came

to be.