Hi,
I have a set of circles of varying radii all centered on the same spline. I want to sweep from the first circle to the last while following the radii of the circles. Is there any way to accomplish this? Originally, I was thinking to sweep from circle to circle and then merge anything but the sweep feature (very annoyingly) lacks any "up to" commands.
I attached the image of the path of circles I wish to sweep. Thanks in advance.
It's my understanding that a sweep must have 1 profile, 1 path, and you may add guide curve(s) which distorts the profile shape along the path. Your request or want would not work for the sweep and Chris suggesting the loft w/centerline may be the best choice as things sit.
If your path is planar, though it doesn't look to be as your circle profiles look canted a bit throughout, you could use a sweep with guide curves on each side of the profile circle sketches. The circle sketches would just be ref sketches for the guide curves to be constrained to and would not be absorbed or consumed into the sweep feature when it's all said and done. Though this would only result in the profile matching the circle sketches where a guide curve is placed at, away from this the profile would wander off away some. Or it would require many guide curves to match or be close enough to be acceptable. This is more bandaid mickey mouse type work on the back end of things, better to fail the want early and move onto something that would work as expected early on.
I agree with the loft w/centerline option.
Thank you both, honestly, I'm a bit of a novice and didn't really know what lofted base did. I just watched a basics video on it and it looks like that is perfect.
Jorge Mirabelli - You may want to add sketch points in the Circle Quadrants and then add a 3D sketch and insert a spline line, use that for your Guide Lines, that would smooth out the Loft. Guide Lines need to be in contact with the profile..
So when I originally lofted the profile, I encountered that where I clicked on the circles affected the loft and at times. Will your suggestion fix this?
OK, how do I get the circle quadrants up?
Edit each circle and add a sketch point.
Thanks for the idea, I tried it and it actually ended up a more different than the original compared to using the centerline, but I'm happy I learned about the option. In general how does it compare to using centerlines?
You can use loft with centerline parameters (otherwise the guide curve has to intersect the profiles). :
I am using a Centerline, unfortunately, I do not seem to have the thin feature available (maybe because mine is the academic version).
( doh! X-[ didn't see literally every other reply saying the same thing to this when I added mine. Sorry! )
No, I appreciate it none the less, I would have made half the progress I have without this post, so thanks for trying to help
One (hopefully) last question: is there anyway to manually adjust the angle of the end caps/circles so that they don't finish perpendicular to the centerline? I attached an image showing what this issue is...the colorful pipe is the one I created, the solid blue is the original.
And again, thank you to everyone for all the help!
Great idea, is that the only way though? I'm trying to eventually entirely automate this process and if I could instead of manually cutting it tell solidworks to adjust the end by "X" degrees I feel like that would be easier to translate into a macro.
You would either have to do it the way John says by extending it then trimming it, or you might be able to use guide curves. Although you might have limited success, depending on your curves.
In terms of the guide curves, I would have to affect the entire loft right? I couldn't just add a small guide curve that only affected the end, or could I?
No, you are correct. It would have to affect the entire length of the loft I believe. Although you could probably do the loft in 2 features. Just save the last bit for the second feature.
Interesting thought, thanks for the idea
Does it have to be a sweep? Why not a loft with a centerline?