Sweeping multiple wires

[ptc-6335237]

Hello,

I have a set of 48 wires curves that are oriented along a cylinder to give me structure of a stent. Then I import these wire as part in Creo Parametric to give the stent wires 3D structures. Every time I sweep the wires I have to select each wire separately and sweep them 48 times. Is there a way to sweep all the wires at once? All wires have same circular cross-section and radius 0.03 mm.

Thanks in advance.

Nikhil

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[Inoram]

Can you sweep one and pattern it?

[ptc-6335237]

I am not familiar with pattern. And the wires are not symmetrical so they have different curves. So these are 8 of the 48 wires. Now I want to give them a circular sweep with diametter 0.03 mm, but I have to do them one at a time which takes more than half an hour. Can you please give me some detaisl about pattern?

Thanks

.

[Inoram]

Oh you said around a cylinder so I was thinking a pattern on an axis. But your picture is a bit different then I thought.

Most stents I have seen look like expanded wire. (like chicken wire).

It takes more then half an hour per sweep?

[TomD.inPDX]

I'd rather have a more symmetric stent in my arteries too...

Sweeps are a bit specific about how they are managed. You sort of have to follow the logic of what you are doing to simplify them. I see no rhyme or reason in the wires you show in the image.

A user defined feature (UDF) might be what you can use to assist in creating multiple versions quickly.

[ptc-6335237]

These were cylindrical and symmetrical to begin with but these are final resultant stent wires (after a virtual deployment technique that we have developed) within cerebral arteries which are very tortuous. So they are always funny looking like this one.

Each wire takes less than a minute but selecting and sweeping each wire separately is very tedious specially for a stent with 48 wires, so I was wondering what I can do to sweep them all at once, since I am doing the exact same thing for every wire.

Can i create a UDF for the sweeping feature?

[Inoram]

Maybe a mapkey or 2?

I'm not sure what else to suggest at the moment.

[TomD.inPDX]

I would suggest reading up on it. I do not see why this wouldn't help with some steps. You can also save your sketch and use the palette to drag the common circle into the sketch. Of course, drawing a circle is pretty simple in a sketch... even x48. Maybe the UDF can call up the same sketch as a .SEC file instead.

Automation is one of PTC's mantras. It has to be possible to make this a simple operation.

[JonathanHodgson · Accepted solution]

As an alternative to a UDF, how about Copy, Paste Special, Advanced Reference Editor?

We have this set as a mapkey... it's incredibly useful!

Once in the Advanced Reference Editor you can select the trajectory reference and select the next curve, then (hopefully!) just hit MMB until the feature completes.

You can also choose whether or not to have the copies dependent, so if you later wanted to change the wire diameter, you could just change the first sweep and all the others would update.

[ptc-6335237]

Thanks for the paste special comment. Now I can just copy paste the same sweep into different curves. But I can only paste sweep to 1 curve at a time. Can I select all the wires?

THanks a lot for your help!

[JonathanHodgson]

Unfortunately not, to my knowledge.

If this was my model I would try very hard to make the trajectory curves a pattern somehow, as Matt suggested; then the sweep could be created once and ref patterned (ref pattern = possibly my favourite Pro/E feature!). However, depending on how the curves are generated this may not be possible.

The best thing I can suggest that will definitely work is to create a mapkey for the whole copy, paste special etc process right up to the point where you select the next curve... automate it as far as possible.

It may even be possible to put a 'pause' in the mapkey for you to select the curve, after which the mapkey can continue to complete the feature, but that's not something I've done.