Hey gang,
I'm really glad that you've all been able to help me on my past projects. I have been presented with quite the poser, though, this time. By this time, I'm sure it is obvious to many what I am building, but that aside, I have to figure out how to make this shape using standard modeling operations, meaning that I have no idea how to use sheet metal, and this part will be made into a vacuuform mold anyway. I'd prefer to make this using lofts and cuts and the like, though I dunno how anyone would loft this shape as it varies so much.
Attached are 2 photos that highlight the area I am having trouble figuring out. Thanks to everyone's help, I have the main part of the dish built, I just now need to build a new feature based upon it, taking advantage of the shape/curvature of the top of the dish to build the bottom of this feature. My best guess so far has been a loft from the dish to a curve/2D sketch on a plane at the top of the feature, then some sort of cut to cut out the relief that goes along the side, but I've had some lousy results with that. I'm wondering what you all think. I'll provide the top of the dish as well for you to experiment with.
I figure if I can get this sort of feature correct, I can learn to do other features that are more complicated down the road. Thanks for all your help in advance!
-Dave
The thing that made it pretty easy is that you have a nice clean image of the top view, so I was able to trace the image and project it when needed to get the required curves.
By the way, to get the bottom contour of the loft I drew Sketch38 by tracing the image, then did a surface extrude that penetrated the saucer surface, then started 3DSketch1 and made an Intersection Curve between the surface extrude and the saucer. A more straightforward method is to simply make a projected curve using the Sketch38 and the saucer surface, however when I tried this it didn't project onto the curved part of the saucer liek it should have. That's why I did it with the surface extrude.