Problems with loft and thickening

tyler_geiger873

so I'm trying to create a under water drone and this is my first like real project in onshape and im struggling the loft if you look in the first image below the loft dose this weird thing were it doesn't stay smooth it dose this weird artifact any help is greatly appreciated

also when I type to thicken it, I can only thicken it so much like 0.9mm or it doesn't work and sometimes it doesn't work at all and says 'failed to thicken" any help is very much appreciated

Ste_Wilson

A link to a public doc often gets more people helping :)

EvanReese

A few notes:

• There's a visual crease or kink in your surface, which is usually a bad thing. Consider modeling this in more than one surface patch. See the Intro To Surfacing lesson in the learning center
• You should aim to use fewer cross sections. You want to get to the end result with as little constraint on the surface as possible.
• When you thicken (or offset, or shell) it will fail if the offset surface begins to intersect itself. It's easier to visualize in 2D like this. Notice how it fails once the offset comes to a point.

You can evaluate the curvature of your surface with the Curvature Color Map tool. You can set it to minimum radius, and play with the color sliders to find the area of least curvature. When you mouse over the surface it shows the radius of curvature at that point. The smallest number here is the number at which your thicken will fail.

MDesign

Can't thicken it where there are tight wrinkles in the surface as it cuases an overlapping geometry situation. Any reason why you have so many profiles? Usually when there's an "endcap" sorta situation with lofts it might be easier/better to do that as a separate feature. Depending on the desired shape you can do a loft or a fill for the ends.

tyler_geiger873

here the link to the model, I frogot to add it https://cad.onshape.com/documents/2e559d51465c960ecc2071ec/w/18a8db6e194f3f7a1ee57f69/e/f8944e8860685539cc359774?renderMode=0&uiState=68499c0738d9bc7021258d38