Tangent mate not working

[Theophilus]

This is strange. I've got a couple of "gears" (like cams) I'm working on--very wonky shapes whose profiles are best described with a spline (not elliptical, round, or regular). I'd like them to touch at their tangent points--think of an ear-shaped extrusion--the curved surfaces of which I'm trying to make tangent to one another (two of these cam/gears).

When in the mate dialog box I get either Parallel or Perpendicular as options--not tangent. Any ideas? I'm quite confident I've done this sort of thing before, even if the extruded curved surfaces were built from a spline. Perhaps I've got amnesia on how to do this?

And if that works, I'd like to create a gear or belt mate (if remotely possible) so I can move the cam/gears in relation to one another smoothly to test the motion they generate in my assembly.

Thanks,



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

 

[TheTick]

The only thing I have to add is that I don't like tangent mates because they don't work well for me.

 

[dmeyers]

Tangent mates won't work on spline curves. Might want to try using a sketch overlay with a close fit arc.

 

[Theophilus]

If I create my curved surface with a series of arcs (real PITA to edit the curve to get my motion right), I'm concerned I won't be able to get my tangent mate to work with the consecutive tangent surfaces created by several tangent arcs on each face. Is this possible? (I figured it would pick a single surface in my curve created by one of the arcs and that would be all--I need tangency to the whole curved surface set, hence the spline idea.)



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

If you end up having to use the series of arcs method, you may be able to use the Composite Curve or Path tools.

 

[Theophilus]

Thanks! I'll check it out. For the presentation tomorrow I went ahead and turned everything into gear teeth (won't move one another in SW), so I'll have to deal with this later.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

 

[ctopher]

Can you create a "dummy" sketch to mate with, then hide it?

Chris
SolidWorks 06 5.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 10-27-06)

 

[Theophilus]

I could, but I think I'd run into the same problem of using either a spline or multiple arcs connected to each other (tangently) to get the curve I need. I doubt that would work, would it?



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.