How would you sketch this object?

I’m having trouble sketching this object. I don’t know if I’m wrong, but it seems that the difficulty is in the object going through the 3 axes. How would you do?

Interesting challenge. Here’s my approach every step of the way. (See how the sausage was made.) As you can see the sketches are minimal and ultimately I mirrored one half to complete. It’s not pretty nor quite exact but it does illustrate one way achieve. The end of the video show all the sketches I used to create.

I then realized that to mirror the one half was wrong. It is not left-right symmetrical. In the 2nd video I show how I copy-rotated the one half to more or less create this spring thingy per your pic. Enjoy!

3 Likes

5 Likes

@TimerMike: I don’t think that quite matches the photo. The coiling direction across the “back” side doesn’t appear to reverse as in your S3D design.

You are correct, it does not match. I didn’t want to spend very much time on this. The point of my approach was to simply illustrate one way to achieve the desired result by using minimal sketches and the use of Revolve and Sweep. And, Mirror or copy-Rotate 180° only works to a point. Thanks for catching coil direction on the ‘back’ side.

2 Likes

FANTASTIC.
I recently started using the app. I did the tutorials and now I am venturing into homemade objects. It helped a lot! I was making this clothespin.

1 Like

You’re welcome. As you can see, one cannot really ‘sketch’ that compound coil. If one could sketch lines in 3D then a simple Sweep would do the trick. You indeed picked a rather complex part to create. After seeing that it is from a clothes pin and noticing how the original has the coil alway turning in one direction, most likely due to the spring manufacturing process, I can see that my initial model (first video) could work in your clothes pin example.

2 Likes