Anyone tried this?
Anyone tried this?
(OP)
Hey, Kids. I was just wondering if anyone has ever tried to be as foolish as I am today...I need to model and/or visually represent a ~1L SS container filled with .125" beads. It's essentially a sealed mixer set-up that I need to show a sectioned-view of in order to get the design idea across.
I can do a series of linear then circular patterns of the beads and stack layers, but as you can imagine I'll end up with a bazillion components. Besides, it looks a little too uniform. It would be nice if there was a sort-of fill command for applications such as this. But then again that's way down on my list of things that would be nice...
Any advice/ tips/ parables/ general discouragement will be greatly appreciated, though not necessarily followed ;)
I can do a series of linear then circular patterns of the beads and stack layers, but as you can imagine I'll end up with a bazillion components. Besides, it looks a little too uniform. It would be nice if there was a sort-of fill command for applications such as this. But then again that's way down on my list of things that would be nice...
Any advice/ tips/ parables/ general discouragement will be greatly appreciated, though not necessarily followed ;)






RE: Anyone tried this?
Chris
SolidWorks 07 4.0/PDMWorks 07
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 04-21-07)
RE: Anyone tried this?
RE: Anyone tried this?
I'm already in the process of trying to get that single-layer along the section line to look randomly-packed enough for my tastes, Limey. You know what they say, "Great minds think alike...fools seldom differ."
Dan
www.eltronresearch.com
RE: Anyone tried this?
Add the part(s) to an assy and make them lightweight so not to slow down the rebuild.
Chris
SolidWorks 07 4.0/PDMWorks 07
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 04-21-07)
RE: Anyone tried this?
Not that many; probably a bit more than 31242 beads. It would be interesting to see if SW could actually solve the packing problem.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Anyone tried this?
Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.
RE: Anyone tried this?
1) Create the Container and the Ball as parts.
2) Create an assembly with the Ball and the container.
3) 'Move' the ball into the container with 'Physical Dynamics' Checked. Now copy the ball as much as needed and keep moving the balls into the container. This should randomly locate all of the balls in the container and keep them tightly spaced as you push more into them.
You should be able to copy most of the balls already in the container and then just start squeezing more in from the top until its full.
Depending on how many balls you are going to require, this may take some time.
Good Luck.
RE: Anyone tried this?
To garner a bit more randomness to the single layer idea, try using a Curve Driven Pattern along a Spiral.
RE: Anyone tried this?
Dan
www.eltronresearch.com
RE: Anyone tried this?
Dan
www.eltronresearch.com
RE: Anyone tried this?
Why not create a spiral and then do a curve driven pattern of the .125 ball around it. Make an axix on the center and then mate 4 or 5 of these along the axis and distance them with the spirals plane. Then spin each one to throw off the look of a pattern, and follow this up with a component driven pattern. Here is a pic of only two instances in a linear component pattern. so I bet you could throw the pattern look off with a few more instances before the linear component pattern. Other than that, I'd so something like this in Adobe Illustrator and paste it into the drawing.
RFUS
RE: Anyone tried this?
If you copied just the balls that weren't touching the bottom, you might not end up with planar artifacts.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Anyone tried this?
I never would've expected to see that in my life (at least in SW). :)
Matt
Matt
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
sw.fcsuper.com
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group
RE: Anyone tried this?
It will still take a lot of balls, are you up for the job grasshopper?
RE: Anyone tried this?
I ended up doing a spiral pattern, moving things around, stacking, and tweaking. I didn't have to smack it, flip it or rub it down so it's still not perfect, but it'll do in a pinch. Ended up with a little less than 13K parts in the assy. She's a beaut...
Thanks for the gooood idears.
Dan
www.eltronresearch.com
RE: Anyone tried this?
B. Long
Dell Precision 380
P 4 2.80 GHz
2.5 Gig Ram
Solidworks Office 2007 Sp. 2.2
AutoCAD 2005
RE: Anyone tried this?
Looks good draftsman!
RFUS
RE: Anyone tried this?
RE: Anyone tried this?
Dan
www.eltronresearch.com
RE: Anyone tried this?
RE: Anyone tried this?
Dan
www.eltronresearch.com
RE: Anyone tried this?