any function to press tubular steel flat at ends

[willb]

Hi, fantastic forum with an amazing wealth of knowledge to be tapped into. I'm a fresh beginner at AutoCAD (brand new).

 

I'm wondering if there is a function in AutoCAD to 'press' (crush, flatten, pinch, crimp not sure the exact or correct term to be applied) the end of a steel tube? I've attached an image of a real piece of equipment where the tube is pressed at the end with a swivelling pin. Tube is 50mm outer diameter with a 3mm wall thickness.

[Dadgad]

Welcome to CADTutor. There is no easy way to do it, although you can fake it. No doubt Inventor has such a function, as there are a number of tubular specific tools. If you are brand new, you might want to consider learning INVENTOR, as it is at the top of the 3D Modeling food chain. You could download a free STUDENT LICENSE if, you are a student, or a free 30 day trial from the Autodesk website. Switching to Inventor from an Autocad state of mind, is much more difficult than just learning Inventor, before one becomes accustomed to the old fashioned Autocad techniques. One of our forum members, CAD64 recently documented the development of a very nice Willy's Jeep model. He had some nice pinched pipe, on the canopy frame maybe, and I believe he was modeling it in Autocad, not sure exactly how he managed to do it, but it looked very good. Maybe he lofted it, that would probably be the best way in Autocad. You might enjoy to look through that thread.

[nestly]

Yeah, you can simulate it in AutoCAD by drawing a few cross sections of the end of the flattened "tube" and lofting, but there's nothing in vanilla AutoCAD that will crush it for you.

 

Edited September 20, 2013 by nestly

[Dadgad]

Yeah, you can simulate it in AutoCAD by drawing a few cross sections of the end of the flattened "tube" and lofting, but there's nothing in vanilla AutoCAD that will crush it for you.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]44075[/ATTACH]

 

Nicely simulated nestly, as usual. Gotta love that Camtasia! If you need it to be hollow you could repeat the process on a smaller internal sort of a scale and subtract that solid from the first.

[JD Mather]

... If you need it to be hollow......

 

Solidedit>Shell

[iainlines]

Nice demo there

[Dadgad]

Solidedit>Shell

 

I have never had any luck with SHELL, only ever tried it a few times, but I recognize that it is a useful function, if only I could get it to work. I just tried it, and was able to get it to work, very cool, not sure how I had messed it up before, thanks JD. Great tool. I once had a hell of a time modeling some very tricky bridge pylons, this would have made it a lot easier!

[mikekmx]

I have never had any luck with SHELL, only ever tried it a few times, but I recognize that it is a useful function, if only I could get it to work. I just tried it, and was able to get it to work, very cool, not sure how I had messed it up before, thanks JD. Great tool. I once had a hell of a time modeling some very tricky bridge pylons, this would have made it a lot easier!

 

sometimes shell works...sometimes it doesn't. super cool when it does.

[JD Mather]

AutoCAD Tip

 

Impossible without shell (for a sane person).

[tzframpton]

3ds Max has a "squeeze" modifier that does just what the O.P. is inquiring about.

[JD Mather]

3ds Max has a "squeeze" modifier that does just what the O.P. is inquiring about.

 

Can you post a dwg file here with geometry created with the Max "squeeze modifier"?

[Dadgad]

AutoCAD Tip

[ATTACH=CONFIG]44077[/ATTACH]

 

Impossible without shell (for a sane person).

 

I always model in 2D Wireframe, because it is so much faster. Outstanding JD, tedious beyond belief, but masterfully executed. Glad I don't need to model those in my work.

[tzframpton]

Can you post a dwg file here with geometry created with the Max "squeeze modifier"?

Just got to work and my 3ds Max license isn't connecting to our license server. I'll try tonight if I have time... I have the home use license installed at home.

 

[ayethzerothree]

nice demo nestly. great

 

thanks. . .

[JD Mather]

Just got to work and my 3ds Max license isn't connecting to our license server. I'll try tonight if I have time... I have the home use license installed at home.

 

Still waiting on this one. Is it going to be NURBS geometry in dwg or faceted planar geometry?

[tzframpton]

Still waiting on this one. Is it going to be NURBS geometry in dwg or faceted planar geometry?

3ds Max license connected today. Sorry for the delay. Attached is the export from 3ds, as-is, and below is a link to the screen capture of me using the Squeeze Modifier.

 

 

Hope this is what you were looking for and hope to hear some commentary. I know that 3ds is a "freeform" modeling application so the results may be less than satisfactory in an environment where precision is of utmost importance. Nestly's demo most certainly handles that. In any event, at least one other option has been demo'd.

 

squeeze.DWG

[JD Mather]

As I expected - it is a planar faceted mesh rather than smooth curves.

The end is not uniform thickness.

[willb]

Revisiting this again after sometime and many distractions. I'm a baby in terms of ability and knowledge in AutoCAD and this world of computer drawing. I tried using the Loft tool as advised by nestly, which didn't make much sense to me initially. I found it frustrating because it just wasn't working for me. I didn't understand why until I saw a video tutorial, goodness me, convoluted. The reason it wasn't working for me was that i'd already drawn a tubular 3D object and then drew a rectangle the width of the tube with an offset (internal) rectangle to create a wall of 3mm and was trying to loft from the left end face of the 3d tube to the right side face of the rectangle, hoping the profile would transition from tubular down to very narrow rectangular tube (squashed). I thought that would be easy but nothing I did managed to get that to work. The tutorial '3D Modeling Basics #07 - Loft - Brooke Godfrey' BTW is a fantastic guide, finally showed me that single 2D shapes are used for the Lofting procedure. No-one actually mentions anywhere I've read that this doesn't work for 3D objects. I've had a little bit of success. It's no exactly what i'm looking for but reasonable close.

 

 

The other profile I was looking to achieve or mimic is a flatter pressing like this aqua coloured piece seen in the pic going from the SW to NE direction.

 

 

Just so i'm thinking in the right way here, would it work to create a rectangle for the end, then a 3 quarter ellipse which is squared off and angled at 45 degrees and then finally to a 48mm circle as the source to maintain a tubular profile?

 

Maybe there's another way of cooking this?

[JD Mather]

..... No-one actually mentions anywhere I've read that this doesn't work for 3D objects.

 

You can loft from 3D body to 3D body in Inventor (and is the way I would do it as you have more control than using 2D).

 

For that cyan part - it either isn't modeled correctly or it is a machined solid cylinder (which is pretty trivial to model, compared to a squashed tube).