3D Modeling: Hydraulic Hose

[m.maier]

I am using AutoCAD 2014. I'm looking for a way to create flexible hydraulic hose. This hose will not need to be modified once it is made.

I'm aware there is a useful tool which accomplishes this in Inventor Professional; however we have Inventor Fusion 2013 R1 so I don't believe this is available.

Has anyone found a way to neatly model bent hose in 3D? I see there are many apps for AutoCAD; perhaps there is one that I have overlooked which will accomplish this? If not, there must be some way to do it using fairly basic commands. Any insight is appreciated - thanks!

[Jonathan3891]

Have you looked into the sweep command?

[drjohn]

Bare bones method:

Draw a pline from point A to point B ... curvy if you want ....  align a circle on one end of the pline and extrude the circle.

Do a visual style of some kind to verify the completeness of the tube.

Regards,

DJ

PS ... if you want the tube hollow for some reason, make a copy of the pline befor you extrude, make a circle inside the circle (at the wall thickness you need) to extrude and extrude that second circle and subtract it from the original extruded circle.

DJ

[m.maier]

Yes, I have been using 2d pline and sweep for creating bent tube and it woks quite well despite limitations to the 2d drawing plane. I simply draw in segments and use union, and it works quite well. However my problem now is that the bent hose will not be so simple - as in, the end  XYZ coordinates will all be different than the beginning XYZ coordinates. If I'm not mistaken, you can't sweep through a 3D polyline, else I would use that as the path. Maybe if I converted the 3d polyline to a spline somehow? I feel like by now someone would have made an app..

[nrz13 · Accepted solution]

m.maier:

You can create a 3-dimensional spline and then use PEDIT to convert the spline into a polyline.  You should be able to extrude the circle along the path of that newly-converted polyline.

I've attached a sample of doing just that.