topic Re: Telephone wire in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Telephone wire

copypastestd — Sun, 28 May 2017 13:29:56 GMT

Hello,

I am wondering how to desing Telephone wire via Fusion

For Inventor it is a really easy task. There Sweep feature has Twist parameter, which adds the torsion.

https://youtu.be/8OWMkgMuW1I

Any tips how to do the same in Fusion 360?

Re: Telephone wire

cekuhnen — Sun, 28 May 2017 23:09:48 GMT

@copypastestd

I am close to say 'Ain't possible in Fusion" with the current tools it only offers.

Put it into the idea station!

Re: Telephone wire

Anonymous — Tue, 30 May 2017 20:23:50 GMT

This is a ridiculous and insane limitation.

Hey Autodesk, wake up! You can add these options in a couple of days... what are you waiting for?

Copy/paste the code from Inventor.

Re: Telephone wire

cekuhnen — Tue, 30 May 2017 20:27:56 GMT

@Anonymous

I and all professional designers that use Fusion 360 or know it agree.

Others don't. That's the problem.

Re: Telephone wire

SaeedHamza — Wed, 31 May 2017 00:30:52 GMT

Hi,

I'll have to disagree with you my friend @cekuhnen about not being possible to do it, maybe limited but not impossible, I think you can get a very nice phone wire using the sculpt environment with so little effort

Here is a screencast on how to do it : https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/094d96f8-5fc8-4900-9104-17a81b966aad

And here is a result of using this method ( picture below )

Kind regards, Saeed

Re: Telephone wire

Anonymous — Wed, 31 May 2017 07:12:09 GMT

Thank you for that. Now I'm definitely aware that I'm wasting my time by using F360.

Re: Telephone wire

cekuhnen — Wed, 31 May 2017 13:25:18 GMT

@SaeedHamza

Technically speaking you are right.

However:

The process you use with TS takes more time than it should

If you later then need to adjust the path the wire flows along you will add extra time sculpting the change by hand

while with the correct tool option it would be a mouse click only.

I think @copypastestd and @Anonymous are looking for efficient tools less time consuming alternatives.

Spirals are really had to make and adjust smoothly by hand.

When I do wires I use a spiral tool to make the helix and the loft along the path in my other apps.

This is all surface / nurbs based and fast.

Re: Telephone wire

TheCADWhisperer — Wed, 31 May 2017 13:28:22 GMT

@SaeedHamza wrote:

I think you can get a very nice phone wire using the sculpt environment with so little effort

And here is a result of using this method ( picture below ) ...

Doesn't pass my standard of quality.

Re: Telephone wire

PhilProcarioJr — Wed, 31 May 2017 13:32:02 GMT

@SaeedHamza

Your kidding right?

How in the world can you consider that to be a CAD accurate model of a phone cord?

Re: Telephone wire

cekuhnen — Wed, 31 May 2017 14:00:35 GMT

While not a fair comparison this is how I do wires when I need them for rendering or deformations.

3 objects:

deformation curve

wire curve

cable profile curve

I know how you can do it in Inventor and it works and makes sense. You use the sweep with twist to make the spiral along a curve

and then model in new sketches your start and end cable parts and then make a sketch to sweep along that new complete cable path.

Something like this would be the preferred way to do because how fast it is to create and deform/adjust

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byzv_NlyKp_2OWVvSzNHSTZJQU0/view

Re: Telephone wire

PhilProcarioJr — Wed, 31 May 2017 14:01:41 GMT

@copypastestd

If you had the sheet metal tools in Fusion you could do it....it's fast and easy and parametric, but not as easy as Inventor.

Re: Telephone wire

SaeedHamza — Wed, 31 May 2017 14:21:25 GMT

Hi,

I know that this is not an accurate way of modelling it in Fusion at all 🙂

what I mean by using it is to achieve the most possible shape close to it to help the guy proceed in his model

and I think it's a shame that Fusion doesn't have it ...

and remember that not everyone has sheet metal

Saeed

Re: Telephone wire

cekuhnen — Wed, 31 May 2017 14:34:41 GMT

@SaeedHamza

If you want to use T-Splines I would use this workflow

make a coil

3d include the edge as a rail

make a cross section profile at the end

sweep in splines the profile along the rail

Re: Telephone wire

PhilProcarioJr — Wed, 31 May 2017 14:42:30 GMT

@SaeedHamza

"I know that this is not an accurate way of modelling it in Fusion at all"

If it's not accurate there is no point in using CAD to do it.

"and remember that not everyone has sheet metal"

This is why I said "IF you had sheet metal you could do it".

Re: Telephone wire

SaeedHamza — Wed, 31 May 2017 14:52:19 GMT

Thanks for pointing that my friend 🙂

ya I thought about it but this gives only a straight one only, that's why I started thinking of other solutions

Re: Telephone wire

TrippyLighting — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 01:15:34 GMT

@PhilProcarioJr wrote:

@SaeedHamza

"I know that this is not an accurate way of modelling it in Fusion at all"

If it's not accurate there is no point in using CAD to do it.

I'd have to disagree. Not every part of every model has to be accurate. If you are designing the hand piece of a corded phone and need the cord just for rendering purposes and visual representation it does not have to be CAD accurate. I do agree that the method presented is not the best possible in Fusion.

A method that l've used for short pieces is to create a spline as the path the cable coil would follow. Then I swept a T-spline along the path to serve as the canvas (so to speak) for another spline. When you create the second spline you can pick the vertices of the t-spline mesh and can snap the spline to it while winding that spline around the T-spline

Then the usual plane along path, circle and sweep.

And it looks like @cekuhnen used Blender for the image he posted and that would also be my goto tool for a number of these things that are not possible in Fusion 360.

Re: Telephone wire

PhilProcarioJr — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 11:16:13 GMT

@TrippyLighting

So you would give your boss or a customer a cord that looks like the one @SaeedHamza posted?

Plus my point was there is no reason to use a CAD app if visual representation is all your after, use a polygon modeling app like blender and it's done in less then 2 min as opposed to CAD that lacks the proper tools and will take a lot longer. Granted if the CAD app has tools to easily and quickly create that model that's different, but we are talking about Fusion.

Just my 2 cents.

Re: Telephone wire

TrippyLighting — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 12:54:14 GMT

No I would not provide that quality to my clients, but that was not my point.

Not everyone knows how to use polygon modeling software and for the occasional use even a more cumbersome method in Fusion 360 is still quicker then having to learn yet another software.

Here is a method that I've used previously for such things and it is "fairly" CAD accurate. The obvious disadvantage of any of these T-Spline methods is of course that once you have your cord it's pretty static. One cannot simply edit the path spline in order to re-route the cord. Looking forward to @PhilProcarioJr's screencast with the Sheetmetal method.