Constraining 3D lines?

[FranciscoR]

Hi, I've been trying to do find a quick solution for this but I've been unable to.

Please see the image below to help me with the explanation. What i want to do is create a path from the blue connector to the other blue connector. The requirement is that after each of the connectors' ends, I need a 10mm straight segment, then I need a tangent arc of an specific radius (in this case 50mm) and then I need a tangent line joining both arcs.

If both connectors' centerlines were in the same plane, I could easily constrain the 10mm dimension and the radius of the arcs in a sketch and I'd be done in a minute, but since the connectors' centerlines lie in different planes I haven't been able to find a way to "constrain" the segments the same way.

The way I'm doing it now is extending the 10mm segments way longer than required on both ends (you can see on the picture), then connecting the lines with a straight line, and then just adding a couple of tangent arcs on each of the corners. I then reduce the distance of the original lines by hand via trial and error until I get close to 10mm for each segment.

Since I have to repeat this procedure for a lot of different positions, I was trying to find a more efficient way to do this, and also a way to get exactly the 10mm I need instead of just getting close to 10mm.

Can you think of a better way than this approach?

Thanks in advance

 

[NutAce]

There is an out of the box functionality for this...The Routing application is capable of doing this.
I am suspecting though, you don't have the license for that

Assuming your connectors are individual components in an assembly.
Create in each connector a sketch with reference lines (like the curves you did in your example) and on top of that the 10mm extension lines.When placed in the assy create the connecting reference line and add Splines between the reference lines to create the radii. The splines you can give a G1 or G2 constraint between the reference lines. Only thing left now is the long straight line between the two radii (splines).


Ronald van den Broek
Senior Application Engineer
Winterthur Gas & Diesel Ltd
NX9 / TC10.1.2

Building new PLM environment from Scratch using NX11 / TC11