Spherical mate along curve?

[timeline1968]

So.. I have this ball in an assembly, and I want to have it roll between two steel plates that are equidistant from each other, both with an identical curve (imagine a piece of U-channel that is curved with a steel ball rolling along it).

Is this possible to model in SW to the point of animation? Is there some special mate I'm missing that would work well, like maybe the cam mate in some way?

I saw something similar on Mike Wilson's site, but I'm not sure how to implement it for this particular application.

http://www.mikejwilson.com/solidworks/solidworks_files-06.htm

Thanks!

 

[8Complex]

I've got a semi-similar application. I had a channel in a piece of flat stock that had a few curves in it, and I rolled between it with a cam follower.

I ended up drawing a spline in the channel, mating it equal distances from either side. I then extruded the sketch to be a surface, which worked well when I mated the origin of the cam follower to the surface.

 

[Theophilus]

Certainly. If you animate it, it probably isn't going to look like a beach ball or something, right? In other words, you'll have a consistent texture/color on the ball? If so, just mate the origin (or center of the ball) to a line segment--or create a distance mate to control the distance it can move along one axis. When you animate it, you won't notice whether it's really rolling or not--but it will naturally look as though it's rolling.

If it must roll, that will be more difficult. Perhaps use some features within SW 2007 to create a belt relationship with a path and the ball can roll along your path, also limited with a distance mate or mated to a curve/segment.

Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe trumps reason.

 

[timeline1968]

It needs to roll as I'd like it to be controlled by gravity. The surface is rather like a parabola that this will roll on. We don't have SW07 yet, so I'm limited to features in 06 for now.

Thanks for the ideas so far...

 

[Theophilus]

GRAVITY? Yikes! Looks like you'll need to run a simulation in Cosmos or something to get true gravitational effects. Whole different game, that.

Good luck.

Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe trumps reason.