In this lesson, we'll start creating the prop protection surface.
After completing this lesson you'll be able to create an extrude surface,
create a surface trim,
and create a surface loft.
The next part of the design we want to focus on,
is going to be the landing gear and protection for the propeller.
So in order to do that, we're going to make sure that our component is
active and we want to take a look at body top.
We're going to go into the patchworks base and we want to create
an offset and we're going to make it 0 mm.
So what we've done is we've copied the body top surface,
and I'm going to call this body top copy.
In that way, we can work with this body.
Go ahead and hide body 3,
which is our solid, and let's go ahead and show the top down shape.
From Modify, we're going to do
a trim and we're going to select the trim tool as the outside edge of the shape.
What you might need to do is hold down
the Control key in order to make the full selection.
Once we've selected that,
we'll select the outside of the surface,
and you should see that it'll turn red for everywhere that it's going to cut.
We'll say OK. And notice that nothing happened.
This does tend to happen sometimes when you have
multiple profiles and there are a few ways that we can get around it.
If the trim doesn't instantly work,
we can create an extrude of this outside shape,
again holding down the Control key so we can select just the outside profile,
and we'll pull it up all the way through this body.
Now sometimes when you have a trim where you have
an edge such as this inside edge here that matches the profile,
oftentimes, it won't allow you to make that trim.
But if we have this extrude,
we can then trim using this as our trim tool and remove the outside.
So now, we're going to temporarily hide the extrude,
and what we have is a surface that represents the shape that we want to work with.
So if we show body 3, this is
an exact top surface of all the geometry and see if I highlight it,
it shows that it's just a skin without anything cutaway.
There are a few other ways that we could have done
this if we did a copy of the top of that extrude.
Before we can make the cuts,
we could do that as well or for what we're doing here,
we could simply make a copy of the top
with the cuts because all we're really concerned about is this edge right here.
But for right now, we just want to explore some of
the various tools and different ways that we can use them.
So if you remember, when we setup our front sketch,
the front profile sketch,
we did this based on the fact that we wanted to keep this thing three inches tall.
We wanted to keep it as minimal as possible.
So the top plane in our case is going to be the ground,
and we're going to use that as our basis for
everything going up to make sure that we have enough clearance.
So in order to make the landing gear,
we're going to sketch on that top plane.
So I'll start a new sketch and we'll start sketching out what this is going to look like.
We're again only going to focus on one corner because we have symmetry.
So once we get one version of it,
we can just mirror it to the other side.
So we're going to start by projecting a few edges.
Now, again, you can go to Sketch,
Project Include, and Project,
but notice that there is a shortcut key,
the letter P on the keyboard,
that will bring up the same tool.
I'm going to go ahead and project these three edges so I can use them as a reference.
Then I'm going to sketch a line.
And I'm going to just bring the line out here and say OK.
I'll hit Escape and I want to turn this line into
construction and then I want to make it parallel with this edge.
I then am going to draw a few arcs and I'm going to use three-point arcs for right now.
And what I'd like to do is again make
this construction and then I want to give them some tangents. So I'm going to come in.
I'm going to select tangent first
and then I'm going to make this tangent and this tangent as well.
Now that I have some of this filled out,
I want to start to add a few more dimensions and few more constraints.
So I'm going hit D on the keyboard,
and I want to dimension this line at 125 mm
wide and I want to give it a distance away because these are parallel of 65 mm.
So now, this line is still free to float left and right.
And what we want to do, the end result or the end shape
that we're going to use for our landing gear is actually an arc.
So we're going to come up to another three-point arc and we're going to go from
here to here and now we have a great starting point.
Again, D on the keyboard,
and I'm going to use a radius value of 150.
Again, if you're wondering where these numbers are coming from,
I'm only using them because, visually,
it makes sense and I want to fully define the sketch.
So the radius of 150 is just a number that I think looks about right.
In reality, that could be a straight line or it could be a deeper arc.
It could change quite a bit.
It just really depends on visually what you think is going to look best.
Next, I want to make these two arcs equal to each other.
So now, you can see that this is fully defining my sketch.
With these two equal and this parallel and 65 mm away being 125 wide,
this fully defines it without ever telling it what I want the radius
on these arcs to be because there's only one situation where they can match.
Now currently, it doesn't have
any constraint or relation here other than being coincident in the corner.
And that's fine. We're not actually going to use these.
We're just helping for location.
So we're going to stop the sketch.
We're going to zoom out and rotate a little bit and get this to the center of our screen,
and then we're going to go to Create Loft.
Now inside of the loft,
the first profile is going to be the edge of the surface and then we're going to hit
the Plus icon here or in this prompt and we're going to select this one here as well.
So if we rotate this around,
we have a few things that we can do.
First, because we're using a surface
as our first edge and not a sketch or not the edge of a solid,
we have the available option to do tangent or curvature continuous.
Now the difference between these two in our case is minimal because there's not
a lot of curvature in the starting point but tangency
will control the direction of curvature but have no effect on the weight while curvature
will take into account the curvature coming up to
that edge from the other surface and trailing away from it.
So it affects more than just the tangency,
and if you have parts that have a lot of curvature,
then you'll see a big difference when you switch between these two.
In our case, if we go to just close to a side view here,
you can see that when we go to tangent,
there is less of an arc here,
and we go to curvature and there's a bit more of an arc.
Now I'm going to use curvature because I want
as much clearance on the propeller as possible.
We could also give a direction for the bottom.
So, we know that this is coming directly from the top plane.
We could give it a direction.
And let's go ahead and pull this into the screen so you can see
that if we just do connect it or if we do a direction,
it changes the way that this looks.
And our case, I'm actually going to do connect
it because I don't want it to be completely vertical.
I want it to have a little bit of angle going into the ground,
and I think that'll be good for us.
So we're going to say OK and we're going to take a look at this from the top view.
We have to do a little bit more cleanup work on this part.
But for right now, let's make sure that we save since we're at a good saving point.
So that way, we can move onto the next step.
