I plan to build up this pump completely with an impeller and everything and then run the Khamsin CFD plugin to see if I can get a nice real time simulation.

Gilles, is this something you are familiar with? Does this sound feasible?

Jacques

Gilles, thank you that is excellent and simple.

I will use English to include all our other friends.

I did open the file but I don't think you can tell in sketchup what type of line it is, are all curved lines arcs or circles probably not.

Jacques

Gilles, this approach seems like the most promising. The loft path seems like a single curve, how was it achieved? Is it a bezier curve?

Thanks,

Jacques

Right, here's a better version of this,I am just using curviloft and arcs. I will get the proper representation of a volute curve and raw that loft properly, then it just needs to be intersected at the top, and a cylinder punched through.

Jacques

jpg files atached

this doesn't look like the best way to display an image maybe I should of made a jpg?

So I think there is a possibility by using fredo's curviloft using arcs as the loft path. I have included a sequence of skp images, hopefully everyone can see these.

The idea is that the start and stop part of the loft could be made to intersect and then I could run a cylinder through the center of the whole thing and have my volute.

Right now the top part is being done with the last part of the loft line as a bezier and it looks a bit squished, don't know if I am doing something wrong.

Jacques

volute-test1.skp

volute-test2.skp

volute-test3.skp

OK, I got some ideas I am exploring, let's see if we can get some help to flesh it out.

Hi,does anyone have any idea as to how one might begin to draw a centrifugal pump volute. The outside is completely different from the inside which makes it complicated even to look at. It's a very complicated shape and I am including a few images that will give an idea.

Thanks,

Jacques

OK, I will give it a go.