Developed Lengths

[JWayman]

Hello,
I have an assembly that looks a bit like a tree, with a trunk, and branches
sticking out at intervals along the trunk.
I need to be able to show the assembly in two different states:
Bent (picture the trunk bending in a fierce wind)
and
Straight (now the wind has dropped...)

In effect, each state follows its own curve.

I am having trouble figuring out the best way of having my branches follow
my trunk when I swap curves.

Do you have any recommendations?

I have tried a Spinal Bend for the trunk, but the branches stay attached to
the original curve, not the trunk.


Thanks,



WF2, M220


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[RodGiles]

Hi John,

Have you looked at part flexibility in the assembly? I've used this for cantilever spring models in an assembly before, it might take me a while to remember how I did it though!

Regards,

Rod
Rod Giles
Senior Design Engineer
Polaris Britain Ltd.

[DeanLong]

John,

Be careful with the "Pro/E magic" functions like bends and warps and flexibility. Your thread is titled "Developed Lengths" which implies you want the resulting deformed things (I.E. different states) to be the actual length of the starting curves. The cool and easy functions that use the Pro/E Taffy functionality (warps, twists and bends) are not true "material usage" calculations. They make pretty images of the starting gemometry but are not the actual real world resultant. In fact, we have been asking for that in Sheet Metal for twenty years....still waiting.

If you need to make certain that your Hurricane affected tree has the same length branches then use curves with points on those curves with "actual length" parameters. This is going to give you your best result.

[IainLewis]

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John,



Depending on exactly what you are trying to achieve I would create a
spinal bend to 'bend all the geometry. This feature could then be
suppressed when you want to see the object straight.



I have attached a video showing how to perform this on a part.



I think you'll have to put some thought into apply this onto each
individual component within the context of the assembly but it is
possible.


Regards



Iain