×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Tangent mate not working

Tangent mate not working

Tangent mate not working

(OP)
This is strange.  I've got a couple of "gears" (like cams) I'm working on--very wonky shapes whose profiles are best described with a spline (not elliptical, round, or regular).  I'd like them to touch at their tangent points--think of an ear-shaped extrusion--the curved surfaces of which I'm trying to make tangent to one another (two of these cam/gears).

When in the mate dialog box I get either Parallel or Perpendicular as options--not tangent.  Any ideas?  I'm quite confident I've done this sort of thing before, even if the extruded curved surfaces were built from a spline.  Perhaps I've got amnesia on how to do this?

And if that works, I'd like to create a gear or belt mate (if remotely possible) so I can move the cam/gears in relation to one another smoothly to test the motion they generate in my assembly.

Thanks,

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe transcends reason.

RE: Tangent mate not working

The only thing I have to add is that I don't like tangent mates because they don't work well for me.

RE: Tangent mate not working

Tangent mates won't work on spline curves.  Might want to try using a sketch overlay with a close fit arc.

RE: Tangent mate not working

(OP)
If I create my curved surface with a series of arcs (real PITA to edit the curve to get my motion right), I'm concerned I won't be able to get my tangent mate to work with the consecutive tangent surfaces created by several tangent arcs on each face.  Is this possible?  (I figured it would pick a single surface in my curve created by one of the arcs and that would be all--I need tangency to the whole curved surface set, hence the spline idea.)

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe transcends reason.

RE: Tangent mate not working

If you end up having to use the series of arcs method, you may be able to use the Composite Curve or Path tools.

cheers

RE: Tangent mate not working

(OP)
Thanks!  I'll check it out.  For the presentation tomorrow I went ahead and turned everything into gear teeth (won't move one another in SW), so I'll have to deal with this later.

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe transcends reason.

RE: Tangent mate not working

Can you create a "dummy" sketch to mate with, then hide it?

Chris
SolidWorks 06 5.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 10-27-06)

RE: Tangent mate not working

(OP)
I could, but I think I'd run into the same problem of using either a spline or multiple arcs connected to each other (tangently) to get the curve I need.  I doubt that would work, would it?

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe transcends reason.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources