Not sure how experienced with cad you are, but there s several ways to end up with the shape you want. It sounds like you are trying to loft a shape? Also are you working with surfaces, or solids? Sometimes you can start with a primitive solid, and cut extrude, and other times it s easier to build extrude, or do a combination of both, but many times they require the use of construction geometry created on other planes. I prefer linux, but when it comes to cad I prefer autodesk inventor. I bought a dell xps with windblows specifically for inventor cause I hated cad stuff for linux. It sounde like you need to use splines, (or curves, but with curves you would have to be sure they were tangent to each other else it would look like crap). In inventor I use splines, and the loft command. That works well for me, but it requires using multiple, sometimes many work planes. One thing I learned though is for any looped geometry, it needs to be closed, or I get an error every time. In fact that s most of my errors I run into. If you can zoom into the area where 2 end points meet after getting an error there s a good chance that those end points are not connected. it s just a matter of placing the correct constraint on the end points, and closing the loop. Loft command is sometimes tedious. That being said I can t quite picture what you mean by "teardrop surround that would be inside".

 

It would be helpful if you posted a pic of what you have so far, or what you have in mind.

 

See if you have a "snap to tangent" setting in your software (I'm not familiar with freecad or tinkercad). This will be for both the straight lines. A couple of iterations and there it is...

 

is this something like what you're looking for?

(about 2 minutes if the software cooperates)

 

is this something like what you're looking for?
View attachment 302480

(about 2 minutes if the software cooperates)

pretty much exactly that. i have no method i can find easily in tinkercar or freecad to make the outline of the teardrop. that does not get into the issues i have with adding layers, screw holes or anything else. what did you use to make that and how?

mine look like this:

i then also lose the grid lines in freecad once i pad the shape so it is hard to edit, and i cannot find a better way to line things up in the first image. all in all these attempts at using cad software make me despise the difference between users and engineers.

 

Like this ?

 

hilariously true. i ended up getting in touch with a friend who, i just found out, teaches CAD as a college course. i will have him walk me through some of this. DeLander, tell me more! yes, pretty much exactly like that lololol
(y'all must surely think i are an idiot, which is true)

-v

 

You might get more replies if you posted this in the Fabrication section of the forum

 

Not an idiot at all.
I use GibbsCam. I know there are much faster software programs to do what I do, but it's what I'm familiar with. And, it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks.😁

 

too true

 

ok here it is anyways...

Step A. Be sure the snap to Endpoint, Quadrant and Tangent are all enabled...

Step B. Line from quadrant to tangent

Step C. Another line from that endpoint to a tangent...

Step D. Another line from the endpoint to a new tangent (which is very close to the old spot). And then the old and new lines are pretty much the same. Delete the old line (gray color). Enough iterations... we're done! Use the new line.

Step E. Just some clean up. Mirror the new line and delete the unneeded ones...

Best wishes there!

 

i just thought of a different way to do this using some geometry (without the tangent function)...

Have fun!