Seating Spherical Object into a Cone

[Troberts]

I ran across a wierd one. I tried to seat a male sphere into a female cone. I thought a Tangental Mate would do it. Unfortunately, the program gets confused when the sphere starts to contact more than one side of the cone. (I want to join the two objects with a single contact line. Spherical geometry says this should work.) The mate works fine, just as long as I mate the sphere to one side of the cone. When I move the sphere deeper into the cone, so it will contact the other side of the cone, the mate blows up. Any suggestions? (I am still using SW2001+ by the way.)

Thanks.

 

[TheTick]

How is your sphere generated? Is it from a revolve feature? If so,

[step 1] the sketch center should be the sphere center. Mate that point coincident to the cone's axis.

[step 2] Use 2D or 3D sketch to draw a silhouette line (through apex) on the cone (you can do this at component or assembly level) -or- use cone's sketch line if it is a revolve feature. Mate the sphere surface tangent to the silhouette line.

Tangent mates in SW have much to be desired. Anything beyond cylinder-to-plane is suspect.

All this machinery making modern music can still be open hearted.

 

[OopS]

If you are modeling the spherical part in the way which TheTick has suggested to you, the new part will be always a referenced part

 

[TheTick]

Actually, the above is written with the assumption that the sphere and cone are separate, independent components. I made an example to test the procedure. I could send the files, if you wish.

 

[Troberts]

Thanks guys, it works!
Tom