Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

Greetings all

I am working my way through JD Mather's tuts, thanks to the project files he very speedily sent me.

I am on tut 11, cylindrical cam, point 10 - Extrude the outer ring to the spline surface.

Everything else has gone like clockwork, but I now get "extrusion distance is zero.Use Edit Extruded Feature to change the extrusion distance."

I have re-tried a couple of times up to this point, but I can't see what I'm missing.

I will attach my attempt.

P.S. I have learned more about surfaces in 2 days than in the last 6 months of using/abusing Inventor.

- Inventor 2013 Pro

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Looks like the behavior has changed since I wrote that tutorial.  The direction arrow is wrong.  (looks like a bug in the progam to me)

Try using Between instead and select the end of the cylinder and select the surface.

BTW- there are now two different and easier techniques to model this cam.

In a later release the Sweep with Guide Surface functionality was added

and then

later a Cylindrical Cam Design Accelerator was added.

There might be some related use of this more complex technique that makes it still relevant.

[#3]

Thank-you again, I just knew the solution was going to fall into the "minor point that I should have worked out on my own" category.

And I really enjoyed the vacuum tutorial, it made me realize how badly I have been modelling.