Variable Section Sweep on CREO Elements/Pro Schools Edition 5.0

[Goncalocm7]

I've been going through the Vertanux1 tutorials and I'm having trouble with sweeping in general, not just variable (although I would really like to get this one to work). I've attached his tutorial book and I'm on exercise 8. Although I have the variable sectionsand I can select the trajectory, it won't sweep through it. Any help or tips on VSS for this version is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[dschenken]

Have you tried a very simple case? A straight line for the trajectory and a single circle for the section?

Also, it's probably not good to post what is probably copyrighted material.

[Goncalocm7]

Yea I've done this before with a curved trajectory in a previous exercise. Truth be told I actually had some trouble with that too, because it was taking the design through a solid which I had made previous to the sweep, preventing the chamfer and fillet tools from giving the shape that I wanted. My problem now is that I can't even do a variable section sweep, because it seems the only way I can do a sweep is with a sketch from the tool itself, rather than using premade sketches.

I'm assuming the copyrighted material you were referring to was the attachment I added? It's all free online and the tutorials are also on youtube. I wanted to add it to provide reference on what I was working on and how I was doing it. The youtube videos are however on CREO Parametric 4 I think, so I can understand why there would be a difference, but the actual PDF guide itself seems to be based off an older version.

[dgschaefer]

The VSS tool doesn't allow premade sketches to be used for the profile, only for the trajectories.  The reason for this is the selections chosen within the tool (X trajectory, normal to projection,etc.) have an impact on the angle and orentation of the sketch and the sketch must be algned to the selected trajectories.  These would be difficult to handle while using existing sketches.

[Goncalocm7]

I see... So if I wanted to make a square which increases in size along the trajectory, I would have to make trajectories along each corner which grow further apart with distance?

[dgschaefer]

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@Goncalocm7 wrote:

I see... So if I wanted to make a square which increases in size along the trajectory, I would have to make trajectories along each corner which grow further apart with distance?

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Yes, that would work, but there are other ways as well.  A blend or swept blend might be more applicable or easier to do.

You can also use a special parameter called "trajpar" in sketch relations for a VSS to vary a sketch dimension as it goes along the trajectory.  Trajpar (meaning "trajectory parameter", I believe) varies from 0 to 1 along the trajectory. It takes thinking through how you drive a dimension from that with relations (equations) and isn't always obvious as to how you'd make it work.

Then there are graph features that you can use to drive dims based on the slope / shape of a graph ...