¿how to make a rectangular spiral?

guillermo_lovato

Hello,

i need to create an open rectangular 2d vector and i can't find a way to easily make it in onshape, i've found a regular spiral custom feature as well as tips to make them manually but not sure they'd apply to a rectangular one.

something like this:

Kevin_Cowles

You could certainly do it with a Custom Feature, but creating a seed sketch and repeatedly offsetting it will also work (bit more manual). Particuarly if you drive everything off of one variable, you can edit that number and scale the whole spiral. Made a quick example, pretty fun!

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/1e6d860c7df096d97f1e13c7/w/8505f9a49f6f00f167bc652a/e/119189fc6f7a01370546ae24

MichaelPascoe

Kevin's will be the most straight forward way.

Here are a few more steps you could take to make the loop count dynamic with a feature pattern:
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/b7d15015b6ab6321bf96e2b4/w/213b8a00e5bccbbf533d2116/e/0053316…

Matt_Shields

Already two great solutions above. But, if you wanted even another way, a quick FS will do it.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/7b265f9547ea96d0c8af0858/w/a086dde488156e48d7b16a86/e/b67e45ac7baaf48ba80c855c

guillermo_lovato

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/111999#Comment_111999

The problem with repeating the offset manually is that it's way more than a "bit of work" when i need dozens of turns(requires manually selecting 5 segments per turn), also the rectangle that i need to do is not uniform, the spiral needs to be rectangular and not square so horizontal scale is not the same as the vertical but spacing is the same(i could use 2 variables?)

guillermo_lovato

also, how would i go about using a custom feature for that, i did not find one made and programming one is absolutely off the table for me

guillermo_lovato

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/112000#Comment_112000

what's that "#offset*#count" value you apply to a line vector?, i've never seen that, it's not a dimension because it also has one, what's it for and how do you do it?:

Matt_Shields

Michael is using a clever technique in the linear pattern. The variable count is equal to count+1. So, when he patterns it, it increments each time. So, the dimension (offset * count) will grow for each instance of the pattern. This technique is seen in this course.

As for my approach, you could just copy my code into a new FS tab in your document and use my feature or use the Add custom features button.

guillermo_lovato

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/112002#Comment_112002

I ended up using your featurescript with some modifications as some max values were not enough for the spiral i needed to build, excellent!