Full Version: Lofting question

I know nothing at this point about this software, but I do know I am tired of the tediousness of AutoCAD.

What I want to use this for is for lofting letters, numerals and lines.

My question is this. Suppose I have a simple line. Can I use MoI to loft it? In so doing can i apply the width as well as the height? Or must have something like a long skinny 2D rectangle before any lofting is done?
Such a 'rectangle' would be a region in AutoCAD but I would love to avoid the step of creating this before thy lofting is done.

As for numerals and letters, these would be outlined in 2D and therefore present the equivalent of a region in AutoCAD and I assume it is trivial to loft these using MoI. It is the issue of lofting lines, whether they be curved or linear that I am primarily concerned with.

Thank you.

Andrew

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Hi Andrew,

i would really suggest that you download the trial of MoI. In MoI it is very easy to create
solid letter shapes, either by using MoI's command "Draw solid/Text" which gives you
plenty of options, or by simply importing pdf/ai outlines of your letters. You don't have
to use the loft command for this.

Regards
Stefan

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Well, for curved or rounded front faces of your letter then this is i a different
story... Hope i understood the use of lofting, in your case, properly...

Regards
Stefan

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Hi Andrew, the term "Loft" in MoI means to construct a surface between 2 or more cross section curves, as shown here:
http://moi3d.com/3.0/docs/moi_command_reference7.htm#loft

If I understand your question correctly, you are asking about converting 2D curves into solids by what in MoI is called Extrude, as in here:
http://moi3d.com/3.0/docs/moi_command_reference7.htm#extrude

So to put your question in terms used by MoI, I think you're asking if MoI is able to directly extrude a solid box from a line segment. The answer to that is no - you would need to make a rectangle curve first to extrude to a box. You can use the Construct > Offset command to generate a rectangle from a line segment though, and then extrude that to a box.

For generating text as others mention above it's easiest to use Draw solid > Text will generate solid text from a font.

- Michael

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Michael
First, thank you for your reply. Next, apologies for the delay in my reply as I had been expecting an email to alert me that my forum query had been answered.
In any case, your information and links are quite useful.
Andrew

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Hi Andrew, sorry yeah the e-mail notification part of the forum software isn't very reliable. Someday I would like to work on fixing that up.

- Michael

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Stefan,
Many thanks for your reply. Sorry for my delay in thanking you, but I assumed I would be informed by email the someone had responded to my post.
Regards
Andrew

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Hi Andrew,

no problem, have fun with MoI! :-)

Regards
Stefan

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