Creo Parametric Community Challenge 2 - Isogrid on a Curved Surface
This month’s challenge is based on a modeling problem I’ve seen throughout my decades in aerospace. An isogrid is a repeating rib structure that adds strength with low additional mass. Although it may appear simple, modeling it in CAD can be difficult, especially when you need to place it on a non-planar surface.
Public domain image courtesy of NASA and Wikimedia Commons.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is as follows:
- Beginner to intermediate: Model an isogrid on a flat surface.
- Expert: create an isogrid on a cylindrical, conical, or radome surface. The isogrid can have a size / spacing of your choice and can be placed on the interior or exterior surface. (If placing on the interior, I highly recommend creating a cross section to make it visible.)
- Optional: add fillets to the interior “vertical” edges.
For this challenge, you can choose to ignore the center circular post and hole as depicted in the pictures. You can focus on the vertical sides of the isogrid triangles. (Of course, you can always challenge yourself by including those circular posts and holes.)
How would you do this in Creo Parametric? Would you use a profile rib, trajectory rib, extruded protrusion, extruded cut, datum curves, surfaces, pattern, toroidal bend, or some other feature? (Most likely, it would be a combination of two or more of these.) The sides of the triangles in the isogrid can either be connected or they can be disjointed (as in the image below).
An optional Creo Parametric 2.0 model has been attached with a radome part model as a starting point if you choose to use it. As creating the isogrid all the way to the tip can be challenging to say the least, a suppressed Solidify feature has been included that removes it.
Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Please submit a part or zip file of your submission as a reply to this post and indicate which version of Creo Parametric was used to create it. Also, please include an image in your reply to this post. This challenge will close on Friday, November 6th.
Example of a radome on the nose of an aircraft. Image courtesy of Kentaro Iemoto and Wikimedia Commons shared under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Additional examples of isogrids on curved surfaces can be found here and here.
Find the PTC Creo Community Challenge Guidelines here!