Driving a simulation in a helix?

Have you tried mating the surface to a sketch point? You should be able to do what you want. It's been done before in the NG. Someone posted a model once. Try here...

"JAG" wrote in news:6Thhc.35024$Y% snipped-for-privacy@wards.force.net:

Also, If your trying to animate a screw turning into or out of a hole you should be able to rotate it and move it simultaneously paying attention to the thread pitch to accurately simulate the helical thread. (That's how our lathe does it :))

Zander

try making a helical surface that has the same pitch but square to the axis the problem may be in part because a helical thread is angled to the axis just a guess.....Just tried it with a simple example. I didn't animate it but the mate worked and if I moved the helix radially it moved as expected.

Corey

...it seems that I had two problems, one is that the mate is solved for the entire length of the surface/vertex and as I am using a 3 deg taper the mate was failing at one extreme, the other more bazaar is that surface that I was grabbing to drag the screw seems to play a big part in the performance, the larger the surface the slower more erratic the performance, the best being a vertex on the rotational axis, the model will behave when manually dragging but will not respond in the animator or when attempting to drive the part with distance mates. The model is very processor intensive and seems to bog down easily. The faster the helix the better the performance but this may just perception.

Best, JAG

Maybe you can use A radial simulation to get a base animation and modify the schedule to what you want. When I was dragging the helical surface that I had created it wouldn't move unless I mimicked the rotation that it needed to do. Anyway good luck with the project.

Corey