Double Skier Exercise Equipment

Fun Fact: The Double skier is one of the most popular units from outdoor gym equipment, used by young and adults.

As you can see the U shape handle in above picture looks very simple but bit tricky to design. The challenge was given in class to create the "U" shape handle of the metallic gym equipment as shown in below picture.

I tried to create the u shape manually with poly torus but combining the u shape with the handle was difficult. Finally, my supervisor taught us a quick and smart method that is more efficient. I have used a simple cylinder and subdivided to get a enough amount of edges so that surface is smooth to work upon. And we can hold control shift and use multi-cut tool to divide into two equal parts where we can place the joint for U shape. Using circularized feature I created two circles and extruded it out.

During the character modelling I learnt how to create flexible curved shapes with Ep curve tool, curve primitive and extrude feature. It was similar process.

Now the "U" handle is ready we must attached it with a slanting rod which is finally attached with main equipment. I was facing some issues using bridge tool to bend it as shown in reference image.

Finally I found the solution on net. There are others who faced same problems and shared their journey on net so that we can take advantage of it.

Solution

Before duplicating, I combined the objects and then bridging made no problem.

So solution is, Selecting edges > extruding > selecting vertices > merge edges, and we got the perfect result.

Important Tip - Ep curve tool normally can be used for creating any curved shape but works better for flexible objects like wires, ribbons, threads etc.