Saving a generic hose section to use on predefined trajectories in various assemblies

[RBobroski]

Is there any way to do this? I use a lot of crushproof vacuum hose in my designs, and the hose has the counter threaded spiral ribs on it. I would like to be able to save this section, this way when I make an assembly in which I need a hose I could define the trajectory in the assembly and apply the section to it to make the hose look as it should instead of smooth. Can you do helical sweeps over contoured trajectories instead of straight or jagged ones? And would there be a way to apply this section and then save it as a suffix so I can have several iterations of the same hose IE Primarysubasmname_hose_1 and have it contain parameters such as diameter and length?

 

[looslib]

You can save sketches that are driven into other shapes.
They have .sec extension.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[dgallup]

You might also consider User Defined Features (UDF).

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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

 

[jvian]

You can set a tab in the sketcher palette by adding a folder in the palette directory (must be user created and configured in config.pro) and add what ever sketches you wish and they can be easily selected from the palette. Or just import the sketch from file from a known location. For sweeps around non-linear trajectories you can view the following from PTC learning exchange.

http://learningexchange.ptc.com/tut...helical-spring-around-a-non-linear-trajectory

It is an awkward way of doing it but it can be made to work. I agree with dgallup and would recommend using UDF's as they are the most powerful and the most customizable.