Loft Pyramid

Hello all,

I am quite new to inventor and forums but I could use a little help on one of my projects. Part of one of my jobs requires a pyramid with the sides having a curve. I have the wire frame of my shape but I can't seem to loft it to form the shape. I start with the square to my top point, which gives me a standard pyramid. The problem occurs when I use the curved sides as rails. Inventor comes with a message "The attempted loft operation found a rail curve intersecting a section at more than one time." I have tried many other options but continue to fail. Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated. (I think I have some pictures attatched:lol: )

Looks like an easy problem - attach your ipt file here.

(are you really still using 2012?)

From the image it looks like split the rails into 4 rails and Loft to Point.

I tried making each edge it's own sketch but there still seems to be a problem. I've attached the file.

new buckle plate design.ipt

Oh and yes I am still using 2012.

Okay, I'm using 2013, so I can't just post a solution for you.

Tearing into this 1 bit at a time, though ...

First off, you're doing too much work. In Sketch 2, you don't need the 18 & 14.563 dimensions. Use horizontal / vertical constraints between the midpoints and the center point.

Sketch 5 is sick. You have unresolved references in there. I can't really comment on the two arc segments, because I'm not really clear on your design intent. I think there's probably easier ways to manage this, though. If this is the only way to do it, you'll want to make the short arc segment construction geometry, not normal geometry, or you'll probably get errors when you try and use the rails. Sketch ... I think it was 6, was also sick for the same reason.

Bascially to make this work, you need to just fix the problems with missing constraint references, then make the short arc segments construction geometry. Otherwise, when you try and loft, Inventor will see connected regular geometry and want to use the whole ting as a rail. It'll ignore construction geometry, and that will take care of your intersection problems.

Thanks! I got it figured out with all your help! When I finally figured it out it was quite easy:D

Welcome to the forum Beau72, I'm glad you found the answer you are looking for:) Just one thing to remember and I know you are new to forums as you did say in the opening post. Can you not use 'HELP! NEWBEE WANTS HELP' in the titles and use something more suitable. It just helps members search for answers if the title is on topic.