We are currently designing our hydraulic tubes in Solidworks around our bodies. However our tube bender is manual and the only way we can figure out rotation (for the bender) is with a piece of wire, modeling the tube, and figuring the rotation. I know there is a calculation for figuring rotation from the x-y-z coordinates, however I've been unable to find it. Can anyone help me, any info would be helpful.
Tim
I have an old program that I used to use to lay out hydraulic tubes. It requires input of x, y, & z intersection points and then spits out a chart with the start of the bend, the plane of the bend, and the degree of bend. It was a bit clunky as it used to be something (?), then Fortran, then GWBasic, then QuickBasic. However, it was pretty accurate and repeatable. If you want, I can look for it for you.
WT
Solidworks Routing (formally piping) now has the capability of creating tubes/pipes with bends rather than welded elbows - I believe that it will also create a bend table giving the xyz coordinates.
Merry :-)
Wayne, That is what I need. To see if I can clarify, we currently put in the x, y, & z intersection points and this demo software gives me start of bend, blank, and rotation of the tube. If I want to bend a tube in the shape of a "Z", I would go to start of first bend, bend the tube 90 degrees, then have to rotate the tube 180 degrees and bend 90 degrees. Its the rotation of the tube we are having trouble with. The demo software will calculate all this, the issue is I have to interrogate the solidworks sketch to get the x, y, and z intersections, manually enter it into the demo software, once the information is processed I then have to manually put it back into excel so I can attach it to the SW drawing for production. If I can put a calculation in an Excel table I would be that much further ahead. Let me know if you can find it. I appreciate your help.
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