***SOLVED*** Sheet Metal Loft - Small Rectangle to Large Circle

[Konradjustimagine]

Hello Everyone!

I'm in the midst of replacing the dust port on my portable table saw. I originally I was thinking of creating a pattern in the sheet metal workspace that I could piece together with some sheet metal or ABS, now I'm likely going to hot form some ABS plumbing fitting to do the job. Anyways, I tried building the lofted vacuum hose reducer just using the tab and loft functions in the sheet metal workspace and received an unknown error when the loft had a circular diameter larger than the dimensions of the rectangular section. I then tried creating a solid model (pictured above) and importing it into sheet metal with little success as again the import utility doesn't seem to want to loft from smaller flats to larger curves. I'm wondering if this is just a hard limitation of the sheet metal workspace or if I'm just missing something.

I've attached the solid part file if you're curious. Thanks for any help or information on the issue! Hope everyone is having a great weekend
(Using Alibre v25)

 

[Konradjustimagine]

Something like this is what I was imagining:

 

[Ralf]

I can make the diameter larger than the rectangular part without any problems.
Here is a short test with Lofted Flange, please take a look:





If you want, upload your sheet metal part as a file attachment and we'll take a look.

 

[NateLiquidGravity]

Here is a link to some old tutorials that I did before the Lofted Flange tool existed. They may still offer some help if the Lofted Flange doesn't fit your needs exactly.

Post in thread 'Tips and Tricks:' https://www.alibre.com/forum/index.php?threads/tips-and-tricks.3612/post-51820

 

[Konradjustimagine]

Hmm curious that that works. Can you spot what I'm doing wrong here:


The only difference I can see is that I'm using inches instead of millimeters. When I click OK I get this error message which isn't very helpful at all:

 

[Konradjustimagine]

Ah, figured it out. My corner radius on the rectangular section was too small apparently; 1/16" was too small but 3/32" is just peachy





I wish the error messaging system was a little better at describing what the actual error is.

Thanks to much for the help and resources everyone!

 

[HaroldL]

At first I thought the corner radius was smaller than the Minimum Bend Radius setting in Sheet Metal Parameters. But after setting up a similar model and a Min and Global radius of 1/64" the part would not resolve with a radius of 1/16".



It previews alright, just won't resolve with those settings.



This may be a Support issue.