Hydraulic tube bending help!!!!

We are currently designing our hydraulic tubes in Solidworks around our
bodies. However our tube bender is manual and the only way we can figure
out rotation (for the bender) is with a piece of wire, modeling the tube,
and figuring the rotation. I know there is a calculation for figuring
rotation from the x-y-z coordinates, however I've been unable to find it.
Can anyone help me, any info would be helpful.

Tim

 

I have an old program that I used to use to lay out hydraulic tubes. It
requires input of x, y, & z intersection points and then spits out a chart
with the start of the bend, the plane of the bend, and the degree of bend.
It was a bit clunky as it used to be something (?), then Fortran, then
GWBasic, then QuickBasic. However, it was pretty accurate and repeatable.
If you want, I can look for it for you.

WT

 

Solidworks Routing (formally piping) now has the capability of creating
tubes/pipes with bends rather than welded elbows - I believe that it will
also create a bend table giving the xyz coordinates.

Merry

 

Wayne,
That is what I need. To see if I can clarify, we currently put in the
x, y, & z intersection points and this demo software gives me start of bend,
blank, and rotation of the tube. If I want to bend a tube in the shape of a
"Z", I would go to start of first bend, bend the tube 90 degrees, then have
to rotate the tube 180 degrees and bend 90 degrees. Its the rotation of the
tube we are having trouble with. The demo software will calculate all this,
the issue is I have to interrogate the solidworks sketch to get the x, y,
and z intersections, manually enter it into the demo software, once the
information is processed I then have to manually put it back into excel so I
can attach it to the SW drawing for production. If I can put a calculation
in an Excel table I would be that much further ahead. Let me know if you
can find it. I appreciate your help.