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How to bend an object?


Crazy J

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I've got a semi-rigid material that will be bent at a specified radius out of the plane it originally comes from, and then fed through some slots which are perpendicular to said original plane.

 

The first pic is of a simple version of this concept. It was created by drawing a rectangle, revolving it 90 degrees, and then extruding the end of the revolved area to the desired height. The new component was then added to the main solid with union.

 

The second picture is a flat view of the material as it is first cut. This stuff is only .010" thick, so the plan is to cut out on the cyan colored lines (creating a series of chevrons) and then remove the remaining area between the white lines, and then slide the two halves (orange border lines) together. This will lead to the third picture (once I've adjusted the chevron shapes and given the part it's 0.010" thickness), which I realize at this stage is an impossible geometry. It is the white colored object that I now wish to bend into a similar shape as the first picture.

 

Since these features that I wish to bend are no longer a uniform cross-section, I don't think I can use my simple method above. Thinking about this, this kind of reminds me of sheet metal design. I got to wondering if there is a tool in AutoCAD to take a solid object, fix some points of it (or define a centerline about which to rotate it), and then rotate it some amount of degrees, and have the extra length at the end revolve around with it.

 

Then the advanced question is, once I have the tabs modelled in a bent fashion, they have to also have a twist added to them. If I can figure out that part, it will just be gravy. Due to locating the part and the electrical connectors that come off of it, I need to figure out the first part so I can predict dimensions after we physical constrain this semi-rigid part during actual assembly of the part. The second part of my question here will only serve in making a pretty model.

combiner1.jpg

combiner2.jpg

combiner3.jpg

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Not trying to bump my post so quickly... I just worked a bit more on it, and have another pic to help show what I'm trying to do a bit better. In this pic, I need to roll the white part around the red cylinder 1/4 of the way. I drew some of this in my model and tried to find some commands for it, but still have nothing.

 

If there are no special tools for this, I can just measure 1/4th of the circumference and cut out that much of the white area, and then revolve the remaining white material to where it would end up and do something to fill in the actual radius part of the white. That's how I'm going to proceed for now.

combiner4.jpg

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There is a Bend Part command in Autodesk Inventor.

 

Might be time to start working up a cost/benefit analysis for upgrading to a modern 3D CAD program.

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In AutoCAd is just modelling -as you didi in the first image. In other softwares as such as Inventor, SolidWorks, Catia (and even 3D studio) you can bend the solids, like a sheet metal.

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In AutoCAd is just modelling -as you didi in the first image. In other softwares as such as Inventor, SolidWorks, Catia (and even 3D studio) you can bend the solids, like a sheet metal.

 

Ok, thanks, that makes sense. I got sidetracked yesterday and never got any further than what I showed above. I guess I'll get to work on it today and try to come up with something using the method like I did in the first picture.

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