Loft around a helix + circular pattern feature

[asptamer]

Hello!

 

I'm trying to make a model of a spinning top shown in the attached image, and I'm having trouble doing it, even though I think I know what each individual step should be.

 

I've made a profile of one "fan blade" at its widest point, a tapered helix that it should follow, and a small circle at the narrowest point of the helix (the fan blade and the circle are separate sketches). I'm trying to Loft the fan blade around the helix into the circle, and although SW shows the preview, it won't complete the Loft. Also, the fanblade does not rotate around the helix axis as it gets Lofted around as I want it to. I thought maybe I should create intermediate Loft stages, but how do I rotate a sketch around some axis?

 

Another approach I tried, was to just Sweep the blade around the helix - and that worked, however I wasn't able to apply "circular pattern" to that feature - it would show the preview, but when I hit accept nothing happens.

 

Is there a tutorial on how to do something like this step by step? I'm missing some details and I would like to learn.

 

Thanks guys!

[shift1313]

are you using SW2014 as it says in your Avatar, or are you using a newer version? The oldest i have on my computer is 2015 and i want to be able to send you a file.

[asptamer]

I'm using SW2014.

Thanks for trying to help!

[shift1313]

ill see what i can do to help. The basic overview of what you should do with a part like this is to model the "blades" as a surface and then thicken it. When you do things like sweep or loft something like this, Solidworks tends to get grumpy when that solid intersects with itself. I wish it didn't care about that but it does. I even tried to see if i could force the issue and crashed SW. I would make a 3d curve either in a 3d sketch or through a composite curve made up of a variable pitch helix and a projected 2d curve. This would be the outside path of the blade. I would then do the same for the inside as well. Then i would do a boundary surface from one curve to the other to make the blade. Thicken and added fillets to the end if you want.