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Curve Pattern on Spiral with Orientation locked on Circle Center
I want to pattern an object along a curve (ive tried both Helix and Parametric) and lock the orientation on the center of the circle (in my case the Z Axis).
The curve starts at 120mm Radius and ends at 40mm radius
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/00c9db9d02dbafeaa5e0345b/w/500ced153d64ee09c8cacef3/e/7f5494a24f6260ffa34ba8d8?renderMode=0&uiState=68c9b5950dc5a3ffa226f524
Grey: What I get
Red: What I want
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Pattern a sketch feature which is dimensioned by the angle, and coincident with the curve, and re-apply feature.
Simon Gatrall | Product Development Specialist | Open For Work
Im not sure what you mean by dimensioned by the angle?
I have also made all the refrences other sketches as per the curve pattern tips. It seems to work on the first and last however most of hte instances inbetween are skipped
Forgot To add you to the comment above.
Yep. I've tried a bunch of combinations and work arounds, and I'm finding it shockingly difficult to do what you're trying to do.
I managed to get something that 95% works. It can't handle the last member of the pattern and depending on the count, some pattern instances will flip, but for some values of #c (the count), it works:
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/f87eec8e04343d46741dbf2c/w/9da5103c5970b339455003ea/e/1c0444aa9daa6801f2423488
Simon Gatrall | Product Development Specialist | Open For Work
ooh that's a tricky one! I tried a few things and got this working.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/07cc9f9029c8433d65138b5c/w/f369bd3fa338a993997075d9/e/c1c7dfefafdb8b6aa3aa9a4a
The Onsherpa | Reach peak Onshape productivity
www.theonsherpa.com
Thank you both! Exactly what i needed 😁did not realize you could update a variable! very cool 🤓
Yep. It's a weird - but useful - way to do a loop in Onshape. Using a pattern that actually doesn't move anything by itself, except to cycle through features including the increment variable expression.
Simon Gatrall | Product Development Specialist | Open For Work
I love that technique! I noticed the last instance wasn't always working. I think it's because of a rounding error sometimes making the param go to something like 1.00000001 instead of 1 so I threw it into a min function and it's stable now
The Onsherpa | Reach peak Onshape productivity
www.theonsherpa.com
@EvanReese Wow. That kinda makes sense, but definitely a lot more hoops and insider knowledge than should be necessary to make this work.
Simon Gatrall | Product Development Specialist | Open For Work
Programmer philosophy? In my mechanical CAD package? It's more likely than you think.
Feature pattern appears to a little buggy and unpredictable ever since the pattern update a few updates back.
You can do this with a single mate connector paired with simplified sketch constraints. But even adding something as simple as a line to centroid seems to break the feature pattern. This is a bug imo since adding a line to the sketch messes with the up-stream mate connector. I've submitted a bug report, we'll see where it goes.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/266599a738971262330336fc/w/8b44e6d5e12f9f9c52f2c86b/e/ab346529f8cef3047642b43…
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This is similar to the first approach I tried and didn't like the unstable result I was getting, but I think yours works better via curve pattern. I thought about coding a feature to place mate connectors with X pointed at a chosen vertex, but it felt like overkill haha.
The Onsherpa | Reach peak Onshape productivity
www.theonsherpa.com
multi mate connector can do that
@Konst_Sh funny, I actually tried your Multi Mate Connector in my first approach, but it wasn't pointing the correct direction. I assumed it was because of the feature pattern issues.
Learn more about the Gospel of Christ ( Here )
CADSharp - We make custom features and integrated Onshape apps! Learn How to FeatureScript Here 🔴
@MichaelPascoe feature pattern is definitely weird, maybe its because it being combined with curve pattern and transform from curve makes it flipped from exact orientation though. But the parameter pattern works as expected in combination with multi mate connector.
Another option would be to use Path pattern custom feature with orientation option - Normal and tangent - with reference cylinder face around origin
@Konst_Sh that's fancy! I like that this community is so pumped about Onshape that they keep answering the question after it's been answered because we just can't turn down a CAD challenge.
The Onsherpa | Reach peak Onshape productivity
www.theonsherpa.com
@EvanReese
I enjoy this too, but I'd love to see some Onshape employees chime in. It really seems like we should be able to solve this problem without using custom features, or tricky patterns. Re-apply feature should be more robust.
Simon Gatrall | Product Development Specialist | Open For Work