olympic rings

[BertilRogmark]

Olympic Rings.

Has anybody tried to model the olympic rings, i.e. 5 proper interlocking toroids as shown in the attached file, and not the faked versions you can see from the games in Paris.

I find it quite a challenging item and wonder if it is solved already.

[vnamboodheri]

Hi @BertilRogmark,

Thank you for your question. 

Your post appears well documented but has not yet received any response. I am replying to raise awareness. Hopefully, another community member will be able to help.

Regards,

Vivek N
Community Moderation Team.

[Pettersson]

Hej, Bertil.

My company security policy doesn't seem to want to show me the DOCX file. Maybe you can explain a bit more in the post what the issue is?

[BertilRogmark]

The background is that I saw a picture from the Olympics showing the 5 rings in 3d.

It was obviously not correct and I started to think about what 5 interlock toroids really should look like.

Then I model a toroid which was simpel enough, but when I tried to assemble 5 of them to the shape of the Olympic Rings it got tougher.

Try it yourself – the way the toroids interlock seen from the front is the Olympic symbol, but do it in 3D!

I have since solved the issue and can send you the result if you want to.

Bertil

[Pettersson]

Yeah, I think the olympic rings were probably drawn in 2D without thinking how they would actually look. I think this is the way you would actually do it, but it's not the same interlocking pattern as on the flag:

If you've done the actual pattern, I'd love to see a screenshot. As I indicated above, my company security policy blocks me from seeing attached files on the PTC forums (they're on a file hosting site that is blocked here), so if you could put the image in your post, I'd love to see it.

EDIT: I think the way I'd approach it is to model each toroid around a coordinate system, so I can easily rotate them individually until I get them in the correct orientations to match the official pattern.

EDIT 2: Or do it as an assembly and just use the 3D dragger to orient them, then fixing them in position.

[BertilRogmark]

Viewed from front, top and left

[BertilRogmark]

Trying to get jpg-files across.

[Pettersson]

For some reason, I could access that zip file. Looks good! Makes sense that you had to stagger them like that to get the right effect. Looking at the pictures, I guess this is the effect you get if you take a chain and twist it as you lay it down, whereas the image I showed above is more of an untwisted chain. Interesting.

[StephenV]

Bertil, I admire your intent and success - cool to do, BUT where do you find the time : ) ?   Due to you, I hope to soon create those Olympic Rings. Thanks for the idea. (Soon = weeks to months)....

[BertilRogmark]

Hi StephenV, the simple answer is that I am 85 years old and have a lot of time for everything. If you want to, I can upload my solution but the pictures should lead you to what I did./Bertil

[StephenV]

85 and Creo Golf for retirement - Awesome!. Sure, upload your Olympic Rings. I don't know when I will play with those rings. I do have, I'm sure, a good idea how to create these. Me 20 years less than you and 38 years CAD (PTC >16 years of that 38 and still PTC). Thanks Bertil! ... Stephen

[BertilRogmark]

I have been on PTC since 1995 and still find it awesome, especially for sheet-metal design.

Attached are the Olympic rings

Regards

Bertil

[RPN]

Pretty cool riddle 😇

I ask my self how to calculate the points where the rings are touching.

[BertilRogmark]

My model was done by trial and error.

The exact touching points should be calcuable (nice word) by the following parameters:

My model values in brackets

W Rings’ horizontal distance [210]

H Rings’ vertical distance [105]

C Ring centerline diameter [185]

R Ring thickness diameter [20]

D Distance ringcentre to ringcentre [ (W/2)^2+H^2)^0.5 ]

A Angle between two interlocking rings [30°]

I am investigating this myself now that you raised the question.

[Radovan_DT]

Its very interesting optical illusion. I think for 3D model to look exactly like 2D olympic logo the rings should be ellipses or it will be weird looking rings and not exact circles. There is some algorithm we did in school for converting 2D into 3D to find exact dimensions but its been a while and its so complicated its better to stick to trial and error.

[BertilRogmark]

I have redesign my rings, using a tangent requirement to make sure the rings are touching.

The result is attached. It looks quite different and not very good from front.

However, if you modify the assembly relation parameter controlling the ring thickness from 20 to 10 the optical result is acceptable. Measuring the distance between the ring generation curves show that the curves pass within 1 thickness of each other.

So far so good.

Bertil