3D spiral

Discussion in 'AutoCAD' started by Richard Busuttil, Oct 12, 2003.

  1. Is there a way of extruding a circle or any shape along a 3D spiral.
    Such as a coil spring or a handrail for a spiral staircase.
    I have tried solids and surfaces but nothing works.

    Any help would be appreciated.

    Thanks
    Richardb
     
    Richard Busuttil, Oct 12, 2003
    #1
  2. Richard Busuttil

    CW Guest

    Yes, get a different cad program. Turbocad will do that with great ease.
     
    CW, Oct 12, 2003
    #2
  3. Richard Busuttil

    Robert Guest

    I have a few drawings done just send me the coordiantes needed i will be
    able to come up with a dwg in cad 14 extension file

    Regards

    Rob
     
    Robert, Oct 13, 2003
    #3
  4. Richard Busuttil

    Dan S. Guest

    Rich, There is a way to do this in cad. Now, i havn't done this in a
    while, but i can give you the basic concept. (for what its worth)

    Fist off, create a circle at the desired radius/dia, use the trim
    command to cut the circle in half.
    now you need to rotate the ucs so that the Y axis is in the direction
    of the former Z direction. Figure out the slope or angle in which the
    spiral will accending. now rotate the half-circle so that it is angled
    upward at the desired slope. now copy, and rotate the half-circle 180d
    (using the original ucs) use osnaps to connect the two halves. (so
    that they form a spiral)
    once you have gotten the spiral at the approprite height and angle,
    you need to change the ucs once again so that one of the endpoints
    (top or bottom) is perpendicular with the ucs. after that all you need
    to do is join all the line segments to creat one line. Create the
    shape that the actual handrail "grip" looks like, and make it into a
    region. Once it's a region, it's just a matter of extruding the shape
    along a path, which would be the spiral.

    I hope this helped a little more than telling you to buy new software.
    Good luck!!!

    Daniel Sandy
     
    Dan S., Oct 13, 2003
    #4
  5. Say, why not to use a "Torus" tool from Solids toolbar to do that? Or draw a cross section of the desired handrail/spring and
    use Revolve-->Slice-->Rotate-->Array-->Union set of commands? The only setback in all of these techniques is that the final
    "spiral" is not helical one. But for most of the cases it is good enough.

    Regards,

    Igor.
     
    Igor Mironenko, Oct 14, 2003
    #5
  6. This would give a helix not a spiral. (Constant diameter in Z direction.)
     
    Michael Bulatovich, Oct 14, 2003
    #6
  7. Wait.......that's what he asked for: a helix. But isn't there another
    problem with this approach?
    Don't you end up with an ellipse in plan?
     
    Michael Bulatovich, Oct 14, 2003
    #7
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