I would like to center (align) a spiral on the center of an rod. only I cannot find any direct points at the spiral to perform this with the Translate tool, for example.
Can anyone tell me how to accomplish this anyway?
Hi Jan Willem,
You could draw a circle at the end of the shaft, rotate 90 degrees, and then move to your required position for the spring. Using the align tool align the end of the spring to the circle.
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I’m not OP, but I’m having a lot of trouble visualizing how this would work. Would you be able to take a few screen shots?
Hello @Cjacob,
Thanks for your response. Just like Andrew (@andrew), I had to think quite a bit about exactly how you mean, but I managed in the end!
Assuming that I managed to center the spiral perfectly around the axis, I think I used too many steps to do so. Below I give step by step how I did it.
Possibly you can indicate if it is possible to perform the centering with fewer steps.
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Here’s how I did it. I used the sketched line at the center of the coil. The cylinder I made at the center of coil is temporary and used to do the final align.
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Hello Mike @TigerMike,
Definitely a nice solution. Thanks for your video. I hadn’t noticed before that during the revolve function the sketch is automatically made invisible, so you don’t see the sketched line in the center.
So you see… Both @Cjacob’s solution and your solution give the same end result, but with a totally different approach.
Hi Jan-Willem,
Seems there is always a way with Shapr3D. Great App!
I have a question or query. On the attached sample, how can I move the O’ring from one groove to the other groove using the alignment tool. Or possibly there is another tool? Haven’t been able to figure this out yet.
Thank you.
O’ring Alignment.shapr (8.2 KB)
Hi CJ,
For this the alignment tool won’t work. You want to use the Move/Rotate tool. First measure the distance between grooves. I measured from the top flat surface (a face) to the other top flat surface (another face) to get 60.325mm. Then select the o-ring and move it that far. I also selected the copy function to make a 2nd o-ring.
Hi Bob,
Thank you.
Yes, was thinking the same thing. Just wondering, if the O’ring groove is on another body on the “assembly” how could this be performed? Like, can a round object, (i.e. O’ring shape), have a method for “alignment” to a groove?
There is no way to do that directly. You can only align planar, cylindrical, conical and spherical.
A work-around: instead of aligning a “real” o-ring, make a “non-o-ring” by revolving a square. (Like a flat washer) Then you would have a cylindrical surface that could be aligned to the cylindrical groove. Finally, fillet the square o-ring to make it round…. If the groove is not flat, you’d have more challenges.
If your o-ring is on one “assembly” that you want to align to groove on another “assembly”, you could add a square profile non-o-ring (flat washer) to the first “assembly” then align the two “assemblies” together (using the cylindrical surfaces) and delete the flat washer (or better yet, hide it in case you need to align again!)
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Great explanation. Understood on the workaround.
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