Extruding on a tapered polygon.

[mm5949]

@jean lemire said:

Hi Dave, hi folks.

You are rigth. The "Follow me" Tool first operation is to rotate any profile that is not perpendicular to the start of the path in such a way that it becomes perpendicular. the only problem is that it is not really a rotation but a projection. In this case of a circular groove, it will, indeed, becomes elliptical.

In my example, I just drew a circle centered on the midpoint of the slanted side and then I erased the unwanted part to get a circular grove. A more refined method would be to carefully position this "cutting" circle to mimick, as well as possible, the positioning of a real life router bit.

Another possibility would be to carefully position a cylinder on one side of the leg, then do an intersection and finally delete unwanted geometry. After that, a circular array can be made with the grooved face to obtain 5 more. This would work but is a lot of work.

Just ideas.

Hi Jean,
I think I did it your way this evening (this SU can become addictive, I am learning). I made a tapered leg and then realigned the axes for each face before I drew a vertical bead up the side of the leg using the push/pull tool. It seems to have worked quite well. I had to do a little cleanup at the top of each leg, but that wasn't hard.
Thank you (everyone) for your help.
I shall be back!!
Mel