How to generate a duct with compound curvature in UGS NX7.5?

[oteast]

I'm a novice user to UGS much less solidmodeling, but fortunately have some machine shop experience so the paradigm shift from traditional CAD is hard but not impossible. OK in the attached file I have to close a duct, you can see a wireframe outline of the duct where the curvature is compound, the crossection gets deeper as the duct bends around. Any ideas on how to do this?

1) I thought to try to use sweep to sweep through the crosssections, but am getting bogged down in the details.
2) Thinking to use a Boolen compbination of solids in interesection to fill the region in and then try to copy a second scale it to some large fraction to hollow it out.

The file is attached. Any suggestions for a novice and which way to go (or a third way...) is appreciate.

Oliver

 

[MickyV007]

Is it something like this you are trying to build?

Best regards,

Michaël.

NX4+TC9 / NX6+TC8Unified / NX7.5 native

 

[Toost]

I gave it a try using a Thru Curve mesh and some individual sweeps.
Suppress the sweeps / unsuppress the Thru Curve mesh.
I don't know if the intermediate sketches should have been used or not, so i omitted it/ them since i guessed that you where looking for a somewhat smooth transition instead of a stepped. ( 3 sections used in the Thru curve mesh, only start and end used in the sweeps. Note that sweeps w. multiple sections gives a "bumpy ride".)
I also added a "support surface" to use for tangency on the thru curve mesh. The surface is now tangent in both ends. ( You can try switch G1 to G0 to see the differences in respective end.)
The inside of the shape is somewhat "undefined".

The sweeps are using "cubic" interpolation which gives a more s-shaped transition.

Regards,
Tomas

 

[oteast]

These are both much closer than whatever mess I was getting really appreciate the time working, I'll study both solutions as togther I think I'll have a reasonable tolerance part.

Another question, before I hunt through the online manuals, can you 1) extrude a surface into a solid, or 2) offset a surface and enclose between them into a solid. The rest of the simple curvature sectins are simply revolved and extruded closed curves making solids.

I am grasping UG NX is extremly powerful but the html help leaves something to be desired (as opposed to MatLab's or Labview's help).

Thank you for your time from both you.

Oliver

 

[JohnRBaker]

You may want to look at the 'Thicken' command.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[Toost]

yes you can extrude surfaces into solids, but i think that you need to select the surface using the selection rule "Face edges", unless that is set only get the edges extruded, not the curved face.
( i.e new extruded sheets from the selected edges or a solid body.)