has anyone seen a macro that will do this?

I find myself needing to constrain lines and arc centerpoints as
coincident quite a lot of the time. Kind of a line/arc perpendicular
constraint rather than tangent. Currently I select the line and the arc
section ( thus highlighting the arc centerpoint ), zoom as necessary to
see/select the centerpoint, de-select the arc, then constrain the line and
centerpoint coincident. This can be a true pain especially when arc radii
are large or there are a lot of arcs to deal with.

I have tried a couple of times to create a macro that will allow me to
pre-select the line and arc, switch selection from the arc to its
centerpoint, and add the constraint. I haven't had any luck getting the
selection to switch focus. If anyone has a suggestion, or better yet,
recalls where they may have seen a macro that performs the same funtion, any
assistance would be appreciated.

 

Is there something wrong with using the tangent arc tool to do this?
Just drag the tangent arc perpendicular instead of tangent to the line
and it will give you a perp arc.

Of course you could still get a macro, if you want.

Matt

 

Brian,

I think I found a solution to what you need if I understand your needs
correctly. Before you draw the line that you want to intersect the arc
center, right click on the arc and turn on curve combs. Then start
your line off and move the second end until the arc combs highlight
(approximately normal to the curve). If you place the second end of
the line while the combs are highlighted, an automatic coincident
relation is created between the line and the arc center. This will do
what you want without the necessity finding the arc center.
That is, .

Kim

 

That is exactly the kind of relationship I was looking to add. Hadn't
thought of using curvature combs. It helps to differentiate as to which
object its trying to snap. I tend not to use automatic relationships due to
some accidental relationships that were created in the past, but here.... it
will deffinately save some time, thanks.

I also did not know the tangent arc tool could be used to somewhat similar
effect, thanks for the tip Matt.

 

Here's a macro that will expect 3 things to be preselected, then it
will Coincident Relate the 1st and 3rd things.
Enjoy,
Ken


'***************************
' CoincidentRelate1stAnd3rdSketchSelections.swp
'***************************

Option Explicit
Dim swApp As SldWorks.SldWorks
Dim swModel As SldWorks.ModelDoc2
Dim swSelMgr As SldWorks.SelectionMgr
Dim swSelData As SldWorks.SelectData
Dim EntityArray(3) As Object

Sub main()

Set swApp = Application.SldWorks
Set swModel = swApp.ActiveDoc

'Set up Selection Manager
Set swSelMgr = swModel.SelectionManager
Set swSelData = swSelMgr.CreateSelectData

'Write Pre-Selections to an Array
Set EntityArray(1) = swSelMgr.GetSelectedObject5(1)
Set EntityArray(2) = swSelMgr.GetSelectedObject5(2)
Set EntityArray(3) = swSelMgr.GetSelectedObject5(3)

swModel.ClearSelection2 True

'Select only the 1st and 3rd pre-selected entities
EntityArray(1).Select4 True, swSelData
EntityArray(3).Select4 True, swSelData

'Add Coincident Mate
swModel.SketchAddConstraints "sgCOINCIDENT"

swModel.ClearSelection2 True
End Sub

 

Another thing you could do to make it easier to select the point is to
use the Selection Filter. To take that a step further, below is a macro
to turn on the Selection Filter with only Sketch Point filtering
active.

Ken


'
******************************************************************************
' SelectionFilterPointsOnly.swp
'
******************************************************************************

Option Explicit
Dim swApp As Object
Dim swModel As Object
Dim boolstatus As Boolean
Dim longstatus As Long, longwarnings As Long
Dim FeatureData As Object
Dim Feature As Object
Dim Component As Object
Dim RetVal As Variant
Dim iCount As Integer

Sub main()

Set swApp = Application.SldWorks
Set swModel = swApp.ActiveDoc

'Activate filtering
swApp.SetApplySelectionFilter True

'Get list of curently turned on filters
RetVal = swApp.GetSelectionFilters

'Turn off the below filters
For iCount = 0 To UBound(RetVal)
swApp.SetSelectionFilter RetVal(iCount), False
Next iCount

'Turn on the below filters
swApp.SetSelectionFilter swSelSKETCHPOINTS, True '=11

End Sub