I'm making your typical rectangular Style surface, creating boundary curves as part of the Style feature. If you imagine a shape like half a bottle cut down the middle, I have 2 planar curves corresponding to the long sides of the surface, and I have created 3 free curves that snap (with the Alt key) to the 2 planar curves. IOW their end points lie on the same dtm that the planar curve are sketched on. This is the active plane.
How do I give these 3 curves draft? I can make them normal to the active plane, that's easy, but I would have thought to be drafted they would have to be planar. How would you do that within a Style feature?
Couple ways: 1.. Make the curves planar: pick the curve with Curve Edit, click the Planar radio button and pick a plane; pick a curve and do Curve Edit, then pick an end point and do Tangent. Make sure the end point is set to Free, then you should able to set tangent length and angle. 2.. Give an angular value for the end point and pick the normal plane as a reference. The curve can be Free or Planar, but the end point must be free.
If I do this the only option I get is the question: "Convert the curve from free to planar on the active datum plane?" If I pick Yes then it flattens the curve to the active plane, which was normal to the curve endpoints before. There are no other planes to pick, this active plane is one of only 3 default datums. What I really need is a datum plane normal to the afforementioned plane that goes through the 2 endpoints of the curve, but you can't do this within the Style feature. I know how I could do it in regular Surfacing but I'm trying to learn Style.
This doesn't work. The curve I want to modify is an internal curve: if I make the endpoint tangent it goes tangent to the planar curve in the other direction, i.e. the one the endpoint lies on.
How do I give an angular value for the endpoint? At the moment it's normal, which means 90deg to the active plane. My other options are: Natural, Free, Fix Angle, Horizontal, Align, Symmetric, Tangent, Curvature, Surface Tangent, Surface Curvature, Disconnect. How can I make a curve come out of a normal plane at an angle without a second plane to determine its orientation?
Yes, I understand. You want a plane that's parallel to the curve that you want to make planar, so it doesn't change orientation. But the main thing is, before you change the curve from free to planar, before you even PICK the curve, change your ACTIVE plane because whatever is active is where your curve will wind up when you convert it to planar. So change the active plane first. Then pick the curve and click the Planar radio button.
BTW, it's very likely that this is not the plane you wanted this curve on, probably because it was not in the right place. That's why you can set an offset, to push the curve away from the plane it was on. You could, of course, create some datum planes ahead of time, at the intervals that you'd like to create sketched curves, but it's not really necessary with the ability to offset from the active plane.
Yes, you can, but you have to do it first. YOu have to make a plane active before you try to convert your Free curve to a Planar one. Then set an offset value if that's not really where you want it.
No, sorry, not what I meant. Tangent is used in several different places for different purposes. The Tangent I'm referring to is a button in the slide up panel, below the radio buttons. These options control the end points, or whichever one you select. At the top, under Constraints, you selected to set an end point to normal, but in that list are a bunch of different 'tangency' conditions. One is Free. When you set the end point to this condition, it will let you also set an angle and length, including something approximating a draft angle.
There's no plane anywhere near the curve I'm trying to make planar. Maybe in WF you can make a datum plane as part of the Style feature? I should say at this point I am using 2001 Style :-^ I can do it the old-fashioned way, make a datum plane through points on the planar curves normal to the plane of the planar curves and do a second style fetaure/planar curve on this plane and aligned to the points, but I may as well forget using Style altogether.
But this would have to be a separate datum feature, made before the Style, yes?
The 2001 menu is obviously different to WF. There is only one place where I can pick "tangent" and it doesn't have the same result that you seem to be able to get. I can key in an angle but the result isn't predictable, and I don't see how it can be. How can you give a curve rising up out of an (active) plane an angle? It needs 2 if it's a free curve.
Anyway...I have managed to get the curves drafted by making 2 style features: by making the long planar curves in the 1st Style, then adding some ribbon surfaces, then making a second style feature with the "hoop" curves with surface tangency at the endpoints, tangent to the ribbon surfaces.
Now, I can't seem to make the Style surface itself have tangent boundaries. It's drafted through the curves but elsewhere when I do a draft check it veers away from the draft angle. A regular boundary surface could be made tangent to the ribbon surfaces but there's no option with the Style surface.
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.