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continue drawing a half finished spline
No, there isn't a way to continue a spline, but there is a way to merge two sketched splines joined at the end. This will give you a single, longer spline.
Start your second spline from the end of the first spline.
Make both splines tangent.
Select the shared end point and delete it.
The splines will be merged into a single spline. The tangent handles will go away.
This works because you 'trick' the system into thinking it was once a single spline that has been split. It will work with other entities too. Split a line, select the split point and then delete it. The lines merge.
The limitation is that the last point of one entity must be the first point of the other entity.
Regards,
Andy.
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continue drawing a half finished spline
Andy,
That is fantastic! I had no idea you could delete endpoints of splines like that (although I do it for other sketch entities all the time). This capability needs more visibility.
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continue drawing a half finished spline
Draw a construction line slightly beyond the end of the spline and use the extend tool to extend the spline to the new line. -
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continue drawing a half finished spline
Wierd....I was looking for this info, found this great post and tried it and it worked great. Went to do it on another part and I can't get it to work with tangent or equal curve. I even trimmed both splines and rejoined them with no luck. Strange.
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continue drawing a half finished spline
Jay.
This option will not work if you are doing it on two splines where both ends are coincident with each other. You will have to disconnect one of the ends, then use it on the other end. Then you can reconnect the ends and do it to that end. This way it will form one single closed spline.
Is that the case for what you are doing?-
continue drawing a half finished spline
Hmmm, I'm not quite sure what you are saying Charles.
My two cases were wire 1 and wire 2 (not using routing). Both wires I wanted to add on to. Neither cases were a closed spline.
Are you saying that both ends of each spline have to be connected to the ends of the other spline ends forming a closed loop consisting of two splines? If so, my wire 1 was an open ended spline, I created another spline starting at the end of the first spline, still resulting in an open ended spline. I was able to delete the common point to make one spline.
So I'm still confused.
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continue drawing a half finished spline
No. I'm saying that if the splines were connected to make a "closed spline", then you cannot just delete each end. You first need to make it an open spline, use the technique above, and then close the spline.
However in your case you are starting with open splines, so they should "just work". Can you upload the part files (after .zip?) for us to look at? How about just uploading the sketch that is causing you grief? You can copy the sketch to a new document (CTRL-C, CTRL-V).-
continue drawing a half finished spline
Not so much grief, as I did a work around right off. Just trying to learn the difference in what I did.
I'll likely put up the file tomorrow though as I'm out of here for now
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continue drawing a half finished spline
If you look at the spline defining the sweep, as you see in the snapshot with the green arrow pointing at the point, the point is grayed out. Or maybe the guide handle or whatever it's called, that point is coincident with the point of the spline so that's why I can't delete the point because I'm selecting the gray one on accident...dunno
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continue drawing a half finished spline
I've been playing with it. I got it to work once, but now I can't get it to do it again. very finicky.-
continue drawing a half finished spline
Oh nice, I tried it again and it killed my SW session ha! Ok, I give up on that part file, it's obviously not a healthy file. I just hope I saved my other open files recently...
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continue drawing a half finished spline
I really like that tip, Andy! (Although it's looking rather sketchy with the sometimes-function and crash mentioned.) Anyway, I really need to try that.
What I do if I know I've got a laboriously-complex spline I need to be continuous (like a huge loop or something) is sketch the size of the spline very quickly with only 3-4 points--usually larger than I need. Make the ends tangent/continuous and then simply add points to drag where it needs to be. I hate it when I accidentally mis-click the mouse and my spline gets ended like that, so this little hack works great every time.
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continue drawing a half finished spline
Hey Jeff, even a step further, and it's maybe obvious to some, I'll make a construction line simplified path with the spline points coincident with it, that way I can move portions of the spline all at once by moving the construction line.
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Re: continue drawing a half finished spline
Anyone know if they are going to add an easy way to merge 2 splines?
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Re: continue drawing a half finished spline
Eddie,
Anyone who knows isn't telling. You can see if it is going to be added in 2015 by joining the Beta.
I doubt that enhancing the way to merge splines is a very high priority. Splines aren't used by a very high fraction of users.
Jerry S.
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Re: continue drawing a half finished spline
While there is no built-in SolidWorks functionality to do this, mathematically speaking a 2D or 3D bezier spline can be extrapolated/extended past its endpoints. To do this place and fix a number of control points on the body of the original spline (Figure 1), create a new spline with a same number of control points (Figure 2), then make it coincident will all the control points (figure 3).
SolidWorks's equation solver is not 100% correctly implemented with splines, and during this can throw erroneous over-defined errors or other strange behavior, you'll have to get creative to work around this. The exact number of fixed points you need to properly extend the spline increase with the number of control points it has. Attached is a example file.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
