Hello
I have a point array in a scetch and a spherical surface feature. Now I simply want to project the points onto surface. This should not be very difficult and I have already spent too much time on this problem.
Does anyone know a simple way to do this? (SW 2014 SP5)
Thanks!
Daniel
Hello Jamil
Thank you for the detailed instruction. The Problem is, I have 6400 Points and once projected on the surface I need to export the Z-Positions to Excel, so I really need points on the dome surface and I have to do this for many point arrays.
It is possible to project lines onto surfaces with a few mouse clicks, why not points? Or is there a function I didn't find?
Best regards,
Daniel
I don't think you can project points. If you have the coordinates for the original point array and the surface is a perfect sphere then I think you'd probably be able to use an equation in excel to determine the Z height for each point projected on the sphere.
It should work creating a grid work of surfaces, that is if your pattern is equal or come up with something similar to the golf ball solid model and then use a surface sphere as the trim tool. After you trim then your surface intersection should be a point location..
Edited - Added pictures
Sample surface grid (Partial Circle)
The "simplest" way I can think of is to write a macro to make a line from each point to the center of the sphere, then trim each line to the spherical surface. So now the end of the line would be your XYZ. But I know nothing about macros to 1) create the 6400 lines from a series of points or 2)output their endpoints once trimmed.
(But maybe somebody else who writes macros can say how simple that would be...)
Or, as Jamil said, if you already have the XYZ of your points, just use trigonometry and algebra to locate the point on a sphere with the same ratio of X:Y:Z as your point.
Thank you all for your help. I will do it in Excel with an equation like Jamil said. I still think this would be a nice feature in SolidWorks.
Unfortunately I don't think there is an easy way to do this in SW. Here's the closest I can come to a "shortcut".
1. Start a sketch on the plane containing all the points. Sketch two small lines that converge on one of the points to form an "arrow".
2. Create a surface extrude of the arrow down through the dome.
3. Create a sketch driven pattern of the surface body you just extruded. The reference point would be the point that your first arrow was pointing too.
4. Now start a 3D sketch. Select all of the arrow surface bodies from the tree and select the dome surface. Then do an intersection curve.
Now you'll have arrows on the surface of the dome with the tips acting as the projected points.