Unwrapping Cylindrical/Conical surfaces for construction method

[dprieb]

Using Creo 2.0 M130

I am creating features in my part using an equation driven curve. This is really a helical sweep but I found I have more control of the rotation direction using the curve and standard sweep method. However, I want to try a different approach to defining the curve because of certain constraints dictating the start and end position of the curve (very intense calculations easy to draw in 2D).

My thought is to unwrap/flatten the outer surface of the cylinder, draw in the path of the cuts as an angled line, re-wrap the curve around the cylinder, then perform my swept cut. This is coming from the old-school AutoCAD method of laying these notches out.

My problem is I can't get the unwrap to work properly. I have created a datum point on the surface and then a coordinate system using that point as a reference and i cannot get it to unwrap the outer surface.

[dprieb · Accepted solution]

I doubt this method would work reliably. References are far too involved for a robust parametric UDF.  The reference curves I want to wrap on the part all lie outside the boundaries of the flatten quilt (specifically intersecting multiples).

Equation method it is.