Surfaces of revolution from arbitrary quilts?

[HelterS]

Lets assume I have an arbitrarily shaped quilt located some distance away from a CSYS. The quilt is orientated roughly normally to the CSYS. You can imagine that if you spun this arbitrary quilt around, say, the Y axis of the CSYS a surface of revolution would be synthesised. Something vaguely like this (no surface of revolution shown):

http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/5061/surface3bi.jpg

Lets also assume the the quilt is not of a shape ameanable to calculating the surface of revolution from first principles i.e. lets say the quilt is built from a cloud of arbitrary points.

Is there an elegant modeling technique in proe that would enable me to create such a surface of revolution from this quilt about an arbitrary axis, such as the Y axis??

So far all I can come up with is a brute force method. Something like:
-Intersect a plane normal to CSYS Y with quilt to create an intersection curve.
-Scan along intersection curve to find point furtherest from CSYS Y (i.e. largest radius). Record this point's XYZ coordinates.
-Shift plane normal to CSYS Y down a notch, and repeat all above steps ad infinitum.

Not elegant at all and not even something I think you could do in proe...


Any suggestions??? TIA

 

[Guest0527211403]

It depends really on what you want to do with this surface.

The closest I can get is to make the surface as a motion envelope.

Assemble your part to a dummy assembly using a Pin Connection. Create a velocity servomotor at 36 degrees per second, and create a new analysis for 10 seconds. Run this analysis and hit the playback button. One of the options at the top is to create a Motion Envelope. Click it, and uncheck the option to ignore quilts.

You end up with a new part that is a faceted solid of the revolved quilt. It might be what you need. If you don't like the faceted solid, make a sketch based on the cross section of this solid and revolve that.

 

[HelterS]

Good suggestion. Thanks. I will try this. As you say the faceted solid wont be very attractive but that can be worked around by splining a curve over each facet element!

 

[HelterS]

I found a much simpler solution:

-Intersect plane through axis with surface. Create intersection curve. Create datum sketch curve in this plane referencing the axis and the intersection curve. Draw a circle with axis as centre point tangent to the outer edge of the intersection curve. Repeat as necessary to sample the surface of revolution.