I have been doing some more CAD design this week and was finally able to make the virtual hairdryer handles look a bit more like the real ones. I saw a video on Youtube that introduced me to a lofting tool that ended up allowing me to make my handle. In the video I watched, the person used circular bases as opposed to the seemingly semi-circle bases the handles I’m working with have, so I tried using their technique to fit my own needs. I followed the video to the end, but I ended up getting several errors in my design when I tried using the lofting feature on Onshape, which if done right, should allow for a solid to be formed out of two individual flat shapes and add a few guidelines. For instance, in this example I had been following, the person was able to create a solid out of two different circles and then use guidelines to make it into a different shape they desired. They created this shape with the circles:

and were then able to use the guidelines features to create this:

I was able to create the first solid with the shape I made, but it kept giving me errors when I attempted to use the guidelines. I tried going back in my design to change a few things to see if it would help, but nothing worked. As I mentioned previously, I had made my shape into semicircles to make it appear more like the actual handles, so I considered the possibility that maybe me changing the bases is what caused the errors. As I suspected, when I did the same thing but with circular bases, the design worked. I quickly realized that in order for my design to work, I needed to have defined shapes for my bases – as in with defined lengths, radii, closed shapes, etc. so I redesigned my shapes and the guidelines finally ended up working for me. I still, however, was unable to keep my handles open, so I had to figure out a different shape to accomplish that. Eventually I figured I could make two arcs connected at the bottom by a line, as such:

. I would then be able to set guidelines for them to create the curvy shape I needed for the handle. In the end everything came out looking better than I expected and I am pretty happy with the way the back and front handles came out, despite how many errors it took to get there.