Pattern on path - path divergence

[WobbleWobble]

Hi 🙂

I've got a path, and I've got a triangle body which I'd like to be patterned on the path, rotating in the direction of the path.

I align the triangle to the start of the path, rotated so that the two points of one side are touching the path, and pattern on path, with the spacing being the length of that side, the start point being 0 and with orientation set to path direction.

Unfortunately the resultant bodies diverge from the path.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'm aware that I can get the results I want by playing with the numbers (i.e. distance = triangle_side_length * SOME_RANDOM_CONSTANT, start point = SOME_OTHER_RANDOM_CONSTANT), but I was hoping to get it working with start point = 0, because I'd like to be able to do this in a reproducible manner (and I'd like to understand what's going on!)

Here's the nasty diverging path:

Nasty path divergence

Here's what I'm trying to achieve (albeit without the nasty fiddled numbers):

What I want it to do, but with nasty unreproducible fiddled numbers

F3D file should hopefully be attached.

Thanks in advance for any wisdom you may be able to share! 🙂

[wmhazzard · Accepted solution]

There are issues with pattern on path.

See this thread. 

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-design-validate/pattern-on-path-spacing-distance-confusion...

[jhackney1972 · Accepted solution]

With this particular model, you can use a Circular Pattern and play around with the partial angle.  Model is attached.

[WobbleWobble]

@wmhazzard  Thanks - I hadn't found those threads yet - that is quite the rabbit hole! Autodesk's lack of transparency on the progress of fixes is frustrating to say the least. I did dabble with doubling my triangle piece to make a parallelogram so that its bounding box center was on the path, but it didn't help. I think I'll need to study the posts more to understand the workarounds 🙂

@jhackney1972  Thanks! That's probably a better choice of tool for this particular situation, given the mysteries of pattern on path.

Thank you both - much appreciated 🙂