Spiral Extrusion?
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You must lead a charmed life, Jeff, it doesn't work for me. In this model, I tried it with rails at 1080° and also at 900° (essentially, in the same or opposite direction).. The second way worked better but it still flattens out.
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oh, you still have to do what you described in method 2
draw the semicircle every half turn of the helix.
a little more work than doing it all in one shot but definitely a timesaver when compared to doing it all manually.
i did the one earlier from scratch in 5-6 minutes so it's not too bad. -
Curviloft works for this quite well, using the middle one, follow given path.
It does tilt the spiral slightly so if you want a perfectly vertical spiral it's best to make it with two full faces so that you create a tube, then you can just pop a cylinder up the middle and remove the inner half of the tube.
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In a next version of Curviloft, there should be a 'sweep' method for this kind of cases.
Fredo -
Good Idea, that boolean with the cylinder. Anyone mentioned already that the Draw Taper tool in Draw Metal has a similar function?
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=33406
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@unknownuser said:
In a next version of Curviloft, there should be a 'sweep' method for this kind of cases.
[attachment=0:htg8prus]<!-- ia0 -->Curvi Sweep 1.gif<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:htg8prus]
Fredotaht'd be great Fredo ...seeing forward to see it... and thanx...
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@unknownuser said:
In a next version of Curviloft, there should be a 'sweep' method for this kind of cases.
Fredo
that'd be sweet!
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@jim57 said:
I'm trying to extrude a curve around a helix. I'd like it to be convex the whole way around. I tried TIG's EEby Rails and this is my result— the profile flattens and reverses as it wraps. I'd like it to remain normal to the rails.
Here is a test run with a 360° helix, diverging as it rises. In Method 1, I used the semicircle as both Profile and Melding Profile, then the two helii (sp?) as Rails. At 90° and 270° the profile flattens and at 180° it reverses.
In Method 2, I break the helix in half with a rightward semicircle at 180° and use this as my Melding Profile. It still flattens at 90°, which suggests that even if I break it further the profile will flatten somewhat.
Is there a trick I'm missing, or is there another tool that will give me what I want directly?
What I'm shooting for is a helix that wraps between 4 and 5 times, which is to say 1440-1800°. That's a lot of hand drawing— I could use a tool big time.
Thanks in advance,
Jim
Attached is a sample spiral using SpirixCode - 5 revolutions of a semi-circle with a scale factor of 2.0 using linear interpolation along the z-axis - Maybe this plugin will help create the shape(s) you're looking for?
http://sites.google.com/site/spirixcode
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@aqualung said:
Attached is a sample spiral using SpirixCode - 5 revolutions of a semi-circle with a scale factor of 2.0 using linear interpolation along the z-axis - Maybe this plugin will help create the shape(s) you're looking for?
Hi Aqualung - is that your plugin? How about a tutorial?
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@jim said:
Hi Aqualung - is that your plugin? How about a tutorial?
Hi Jim - Yes, it's mine - The only tricky thing to using it is getting the entities in the right order - The plugin uses any un-grouped geometry as input - Additionally, any subsequent operation on the geometry (such as moving, scaling, etc.) potentially alters the order it is returned in a list - My workaround for this is to first create the reference geometry I need, put it in a group, and then trace any new geometry to be used as input.
To reproduce the spiral in question, create a circle (I used 12" for the diameter), position it where desired, and then put it into a group:
Next, create a semi-circle using the three-point circle tool:
For five turns of 48 segments each, 240 segments total are needed - In order to spread out the turns, a height of 120" was used along with a scaling factor of 2.0:
The result should be as shown below:
If you try to edit the original circle into a semi-circle and subsequently use it as input, you will prpbably end up with something like:
This is a result of modifying the geometry after it's created.
Aqualung
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