spiral on non-clyindrical/non-conical surface

IsoTherm

Greetings,
I'm trying to draw a cooling loop made from copper tubing wrapped around a non-cylindrical / non-conical surface. Can I wrap a sketch around it to create a path? Use a shell?
Any thoughts on the best way to do that?
Thanks,
Isotherm

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/a9e407372faa056a922fb5d2/w/30951035bbc38480046a9c3a/e/aa3de00f36314f55f768eece?renderMode=0&uiState=654bc91c05477d563ee4dbfe

eric_pesty

You can use the projected curve from a helix onto your surface.

However you do need the base surface to be 1) continuous, 2) tangent, you example was neither of these...



https://cad.onshape.com/documents/6e92fc831f625b84b813c0c4/w/b6d57474a0b0f1e82e51eb6b/e/4b12a744a3d6ba948d7ad4cf

EvanReese

I like Eric's way. Another way is to use the Contour Spiral custom feature by @Konstantin_Sh. Here's an example of that workflow.

I am showing the regeneration times here because they get pretty bad the more turns the spiral has, and the Profile Sweeper feature (which I wrote) also bogs down because it has a very complex path to sweep on. If you care about those two things you'd want to make a segment of spiral that's just 1 turn, then sweep it, and use a linear pattern to finish the spiral.

To get either of those custom features, right click them in the feature tree and choose, "Open linked document" and add them to your toolbar in the normal way (search "Custom feature" in the help docs if you're unfamiliar).

IsoTherm

Awesome!. Many thanks.