Can you make a coil into a circle

[Anonymous]

My question is about coils.  Is it possible to have a coil bend into a cirlce instead of always having it on a straight line for the axis.  I need to have the coil bend for a heating element to make it go around a diamter of 2".  If any body can help me i would like it very much.  I can make the coil fine just need help with that.

[rdyson]

You should be able to use 'bend part'

Post what you've got if you can't figure it out

[Anonymous]

here is the part. i tried to bend it but i couldnt click anyting. can you help?

[cwhetten]

There are a couple of ways to do this.  Check out this thread for one example.  You can also follow some of the links provided in that thread for other examples.

I tried to create a coil and then use the bend command, but the result is not quite right.  It deforms the turns of the coil more on the outside and inside than on the top and bottom sides (I hope that makes sense), and this gives you a coil that is slightly off (in other words, the coil does not have a constant cross-section over its entire length).  The thread linked above offers one solution that doesn't suffer this problem.

-cwhetten

[rdyson]

Might be better off just applying a texture to a torus

[Anonymous]

can you save that last file attachment in autodesk 2010?