Inventor R5 - Constraining A Coil

[ehderube]

Hello,

I'm trying to constrain a coil inside a hollow tube. Presently I'm using a mating and angle constrain but I still can freely move the coil part away from the tube. What technique should I use to properly constrain it? The insert constrain does not work for the coil. I am rather new to inventor.

Thanks in advance,
Ed

 

[autocol]

ah, the old "how do i constrain a coil?" question...

everyone gets stuck on this.

okay, firstly, to create the coil initially, you must have selected an axis (a work axis or a sketch line) to complete the command. so, make that axis or line visible, and use it in a mate constraint to line up the centre of the coil with... whatever it's meant to line up with!

secondly, you need a constraint to hold the coil "down"... do NOT use a tangent constraint, it will explode at some point

the best bet is to use either one of the origin planes of the coil part, or create a work plane that is tangent to the bottom edge of the coil so you can create a mate (or flush) constraint to whatever.

lastly, you can use an angle constraint on one of the origin planes if you need to stop the coil from spinning for any reason.

HTH.

col.