Can't Extrude Circle Along 3D Polyline

[Bill Tillman]

I'm drawing up a handrail in 3D. It took me some doing to get the finer points of this down but once I did I made a 3DPOLYLINE along the path I want the pipe to follow. But when I try to EXTRUDE the circle along the path of the 3DPOLYLINE I get an error that says:

 

Unable to extrude the selected object.

 

Can anyone take a look at the file and tell me what my options are?

 

To be sure this is clear, this polyline represents the handrail and middle rail of the assembly. The top rail will be directly vertical above the lower one. In other words when you orient this in Plan view using the WCS you're looking at the front elevation of the handrail, as you would see it by standing on the ground in front of it.

poly-ext.dwg

[Lee Mac]

Is there any chance you could post a dwg in 2000 format please Can't open it with '04

[papagyi]

Why did you try with "extrude" ?

You can easy get with "sweep" !

If you want to use "extrude" "path" ,your path must have start point &

end point.Eg..you should use "break" command for your start point at center

of circle!

[JD Mather]

Why did you try with "extrude" ?

You can easy get with "sweep" !

If you want to use "extrude" "path" ,your path must have start point &

end point.Eg..you should use "break" command for your start point at center

of circle!

 

Sweep worked fine without any additional work?

[papagyi]

Sure JD!...

Now i upload with "2004" format!

Then you can see what i did with "sweep"!:)

poly-ext.dwg

[AlinOz]

I'm drawing up a handrail in 3D. It took me some doing to get the finer points of this down but once I did I made a 3DPOLYLINE along the path I want the pipe to follow.

 

As previously suggested, to extrude you would need to break it to have a start and end point. After looking at the situation you have though, I would have adopted a vastly different approach. In reality you have 2 sides and two ends that are the same and to plot out all the points to produce a 3DPOLY would have been rather time consuming.

 

My approach would have been:

• Produce an Arc for the end and a polyline that's radiused at the curves for the side.
  
• Apply your EXTRUDE (or SWEEP) to the arc and Polyline.
  
• Use the 3DROTATE to get your Polyline to the right angle
  
• Snap 1 End and Side together by the centre of the ends
  
• UNION them together
  
• COPY and ROTATE the Unioned object 180 Degrees and Snap them together at the Centres.
  
• UNION these together and whallah - same end result but with curves as it would be manufacturred

A much more suitable and efficient result

[Bill Tillman]

Sorry gang, my bad. I wasn't seeing the forest for the trees again. Sweep took care of the problem. Thanks.

[Lee Mac]

Nice one guys, but it doesn't appear that sweep is in '04, so I guess the best way for users with earlier versions to accomplish the same result would be to use AlinOz's method.

 

Cheers

[Bill Tillman]

When I was at work, I drew this out on a machine using ACAD 2008. Once I got home and read the replies about SWEEP, I had not trouble doing that on my ACAD 2009 machine. But I noticed something was not right in the dimension between the two horizontal rails, plus I had a bust in the length dimension as well. So I carefully laid it out again using the correct dimensions. Once everything checked out, I placed the circle on the 3DPOLYLINE and tried to SWEEP only to see an error message "Unable to SWEEP selected object". I retraced out the 3DPOLYLINE not once but three times being careful to get it exact. Still no SWEEP. So on a whim I tried EXTRUDE and the darn thing worked.

 

Will someone ask Michael Phelps to pass me the bong? It must be my turn by now.

[Bill Tillman]

Just for grins, this is why things can be so difficult with something that should be so simple.

 

This handrail is on a sloping surface and part of it is mounted to the face of the concrete structure while the other part of it is mounted on top of the structure using core drilled holes.

 

Anyway, tomorrow morning the shop starts fabrication and the foreman told me he will have it installed by Friday morning. Did someone say "Hurry up, faster, better, cheaper....!"

[Lee Mac]

Glad you got there in the end Bill - looks good

[JD Mather]

... why things can be so difficult with something that should be so simple.

 

Did someone say "Hurry up, faster, better, cheaper....!"

 

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