Not so planer swept face?

I was wondering if anyone has experienced the same problem I am
having...When I create a swept feature, in this case a simple profile
around an elliptical path, the resulting faces do not end up being
selectable as planes for sketching, etc. When I measure the distance
between one of these faces, in this case the topmost face and the Top
plane, the 'Y' distance is correct, but the items are not listed as
being parallel, even though when sketching my profile, the sketched
line which resulted in this swept face was constrained as horizontal.
Are there any known options or workarounds that would ensure faces stay
true and planer when sweeping?

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

Did you use a guide line to maintain alignment? Horizontal and vertical
relations don't always hold well in a sweep.

 

The obvious question is if this is really a planar surface and you want
to use it as a planar surface, why are you using a sweep to create it?
Why not use a Planar Surface feature? Sweeps by their very nature are
interpolations, so there's a bit of filling-in-the-gaps going on, which
could easily explain what you are seeing.

Re-reading, I'm going to guess that you're making a solid instead of a
surface, where the top of the solid has some shape and the back of it is
supposed to be flat. You could just make a big planar surface and do a
"replace face" to replace the existing solid face with the truly planar
surface. Don't do a cut, because material might need to be added as
well as removed, which is what a replace face will do.

Anyway, there are several ways you can create a truly planar face, but
lofting and sweeping would be on the bottom of my list of most reliable
techniques for that.

Good luck,

Matt

 

If it truly was an elliptical path, then there isn't any planar surface. The
surface is curved perpendicular to its path everywhere along the path. If
you sweep a straight line along a straight line, then you will get a planar
surface and you can put a sketch on it.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

Can you post the file to the SolidWorks forum at
http://www.mcadforums.com