Square helix?

nahuel_josé

How would you go about making THIS frame?
It's a sort of twisted rod around a square profile, with "flattened" faces.



The closest I've gotten is making the frame with a circle profile, swept along a square line (so like a cylindrical frame), then drawing helixes and sweeping a profile that carves the faces of the frame:

But I hate it very much and it looks nothing like the design :P 

Any tips? Thanks!

MichaelPascoe

Here are some really useful spiral and helix tools by @konstantin_shiriazdanov, they might work well for this.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/59007ff281e43510ea3797a2/v/a32c98e33ad3fdfd68973e79/e/7517d8bd0162caff9f9cb2a7

John_P_Desilets

@nahuel_josé You can also try the split face feature and create a composite curve to sweep along. Here is my example. The corners will be a bit tricky.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/f822aa2219f4ec047dc4b316/w/a856a4d15f9f874e29efae97/e/b41ba2ff1d2445447b748ebe

Cross section of the main part.


A sketch on the top plane where the split lines will be placed. 


Use the spit face command and split the faces of the part. Next, select the composite curve feature and select the split edges to form a single curve. 



Linear pattern the curve and combine all curves to one with the composite curve feature. 





Now just sweep a profile along the large composite curve. 

nahuel_josé

Wow! Thank you both @John_P_Desilets and @MichaelPascoe

Thank you John for the really detailed explanation, really. I'll try it right away (I think I'll have to do a combination of your answer and one of the methods Michael provided) and if I don't have any more questions I'll mark it as answered.