Hi all,
I just spent the last day trying to draw a motorcycle gear shift drum which is basically a cylinder with 3 tracks (paths) for the selector fork pins to follow. I've been CAD drawing for some 15 years and have done some rather weird jobs but this one has me stumped and I'd like to hear the opinion of others who may have done something similar. The problem is that I don't know how to draw the tracks/paths (8mm wide x 6mm deep) to end up with parallel walls. I started off this job using Fusion 360 and then switched to SolidWorks (at my work) when I realised that Fusion can't do a full wrap of a cylinder. I then realised that wrap in SW produces NON parallel walls everywhere EXCEPT for the concentric paths. Right now it seems I'm left with 2 options which are:
(a) take the job as is and turn it from solid to surfaces and using offset surfaces and trims obtain what I want then convert back to a solid
OR
(b) waste no further time and leave the job as is and use the CAM (Fusion 360) to sort out the tool paths so that I get parallel walls.
I'm inclined to go for option (b) but just wanted other professionals to weigh in on this. Maybe this kind of thing is only achievable (easily) with high end packages such as Catia or Siemens NX but I don't have access to those.
I just spent the last day trying to draw a motorcycle gear shift drum which is basically a cylinder with 3 tracks (paths) for the selector fork pins to follow. I've been CAD drawing for some 15 years and have done some rather weird jobs but this one has me stumped and I'd like to hear the opinion of others who may have done something similar. The problem is that I don't know how to draw the tracks/paths (8mm wide x 6mm deep) to end up with parallel walls. I started off this job using Fusion 360 and then switched to SolidWorks (at my work) when I realised that Fusion can't do a full wrap of a cylinder. I then realised that wrap in SW produces NON parallel walls everywhere EXCEPT for the concentric paths. Right now it seems I'm left with 2 options which are:
(a) take the job as is and turn it from solid to surfaces and using offset surfaces and trims obtain what I want then convert back to a solid
OR
(b) waste no further time and leave the job as is and use the CAM (Fusion 360) to sort out the tool paths so that I get parallel walls.
I'm inclined to go for option (b) but just wanted other professionals to weigh in on this. Maybe this kind of thing is only achievable (easily) with high end packages such as Catia or Siemens NX but I don't have access to those.