Transition between tube and elliptical extrusion

[Ottomotive1]

NX3.0: Need help in creating a transition between a tube and an elliptical extrusion. Imagine a rubber hose with a "heat form" to create a flattened section to route through a confined area. Tried sweeping along guide and other simple commands with no luck.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

 

[cowski]

You can use the freeform swept command for this. For best results you will want to divide up the circle and ellipse into 2 or 4 sections so that UG can align points (otherwise you may get a strange twisted shape as a result).

When you select your section curves make sure you select the same quadrant for each section set and make sure the arrows are pointing in the same direction.

If your section is simply a straight line you may be able to use the 'ruled' command or 'through curves' (both freeform commands).

 

[Ottomotive1]

Cowski,

Unfortunately the company I work for decided not to purchase the studio free form license, which I would assume is where the freeform swept command lives.

I did get (somewhat) representative results using the sweep along guide command, but it's not perfect by any means.

If you can think of anything else, let me know.

Thanks.

 

[hudson888]

You may be stuck for lack of a license sufficient to do anything that really works. I'll suggest a couple of things that you may be able to try. Since it isn't possible to turn off licenses in my bundle I'll have to guess at what you don't have.

Doing it the easy way... You need the tools to do the job
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If you have some surfacing capability with you license check whether you can create either a bridge surface or a through curves surface. Either of those are capable of making a tangential transition surface between the two shapes. You would need to extrude the circle and ellipse first so that you can select them for tangency.

Doing it the hard way... May not get the precise result.
This also relies on the axis of the circle and ellipse being aligned. They can be offset relative to each other but your task gets difficult if they're angled.
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If you're really out of luck the only thing I can think of is by way of putting you in mind that a 20 square section with a 10 blend on each corner becomes a circular section. So you build a square for the incoming tube and a rectangle the section that becomes the ellipse. Then join them in either direction across the centerline with a transition section made using bridge curves. This would describe a vertical and horizontal section normal to the circle and ellipse, along the axis of the cable. These could each be extruded crossing one another so that when intersected they result in a square cornered transition that meets corner to corner with the square and rectangle. Uniting all three you have a solid that you can blend the corners of. The bridge curves in the transitioning area should ensure that the sides of the transition solid are tangential to the other sections.

When it comes to blending the corners using an edge blend then you'll have to use a variable radius blend and you won't be able to get an ellipse, just a rectangle with radii. Face blend can be used to do a far better job in the transition using tangency controlled blends, but you still get a blended rectangle instead of an ellipse. The only type of blend that approximates your desired result is a soft blend. A soft blend is tangency controlled on both faces and uses the edge as the spine string. In all cases you would need to define four blends one for each corner. Hopefully if you don't have enough licenses to create any surfaces you might get lucky and have the use of soft blends. Otherwise the method I have described may be your best compromise method to approximate the geometry you were thinking of if you lack the licenses to do anything better.

Good Luck

Hudson

 

[cowski]

Give the swept command a shot, I believe 'studio free form' is different from the regular 'free form' commands. If you don't have access to any free form, then I would try the soft blend command as hudson suggested.

 

[Xwheelguy]

Swept is not part of Shape Studio and never has been. If you would give us an idea of what you DO have to work with in regards to your licenses, our replies would be much more specific...otherwise it's just a guessing game.

Transition Surface might also work in this instance.

Tim Flater
Senior Designer
Enkei America, Inc.

http://www.enkei.com

Some people are like slinkies....they don't really have a purpose, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.

 

[hudson888]

Yes please give us an idea of what licenses you have. I suggested that you try a couple of things to help diagnose what licenses you actually have suspecting that if you do these kinds of things infrequently you may be unaware of the tools available, but also because your feedback would help us to help you.

Shape studio is an advanced studio surface license whereas there is a freeform surfacing license also that I think kicks in just above the most basic bundles. Those who work with A-Class surfaces may already know that shape studio does a superior job of building surfaces for industrial design.

I strongly suspect that swept surface is part of the freeform license, but wonder that ruled may not be. The status of through curves would be interesting as it may be slated to replace ruled surface in the future since the functionality overlaps.

Best Regards

Hudson