Editing a Coil Sketch

[rwillardphil]

I have acreate a Coil, then the overall design was modified and the location that I started the Coil sketch circle is now not aligned to the proper location. 

How do you edit the sketch of the Coil, and re-align its center to the correct location.   It looks like that you cannot change the circle center at all, after initial creation.  Now my coil is off in space and not aligned to its hole.  And there is not an easy way to create a joint to align the coil to the hole because it does not have an axis down the center of the coil. 

[James.Youmatz]

Hi @rwillardphil,

I believe you are correct that you cannot edit the coil to move its original location, but I will have to check. Obviously you could use the move command, but that isn't very accurate. Have you tried using the Align command in the Modify menu? I went ahead and created a screencast to show how this could work in your situation.

http://autode.sk/1GygHpq

Let me know if you have any more question, I would be more than happy to help! Also, please feel free to mark this answer as a solution if this answered your question. That way, others can benefit from this thread as well.

Thanks,

[rwillardphil]

James, thanks for looking at this.  

The coil is a spring that sits in a hole of a part.  The part and holes changed location, based on other changes.  Now the sping does not sit in the hole anymore.  And since there is not an axis made down the center of the coil, its hard to align the spring back into the hole.  I saw the screencast, but the entire springs sits in the hole, not the end of the coil.  I had to Move the spring to a "close" enough location in the hole, then add a Revolution, As-Built joint, but it is not actually in the true center of the hole.  See the picture below.

The soultion that I would really like is to be able to edit the sketch and add a constraint to tie the coil circle to the center of the hole of the yellow piece (which I thought I did when I created it).  If that is not possible, then an axis should automatically be made down the coil, that can be used to add joints  AND I cannot make an axis based on the selectable features of the coil.  If I could make an axis down the center I could re-align it with no problem, but I think the base issue is that the coil sketch cannot be accessed and properly constrained in place.

[James.Youmatz]

Hi @rwillardphil,

Its not a problem! Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, it took a little bit of research on my part. One thing you may want to try is creating a joint origin. A joint origin defines the geometry used to relate a joint's components. By doing this it will define the origin directly in the center of your coil. You can then use this joint origin to create a joint that aligns with the center of your hole so they can line up. I went ahead and made a screencast showing how I did this. 

http://autode.sk/1OpSxp7

Let me know if this works for you or if you need more help! 

Thanks,

[rwillardphil]

James,

I did try that, however when I initially created the coil, I did not create the sketch on the "origin" axis.  IF it is made on the "origin" axis, then the Joint Origin can then be created on the "origin".  However if is created in-place, away from the origin, then there is no point or axis to reference to create the Joint Origin with.  (I hope that makes sense).  

See the picture below. One of the coils was made at the origin, but the other was not.  There is no geometry that can be selected to create an axis or Joint Origin at the center of the coil, that was not made on the origin.

Again, thanks for working through this with me.  I still cannot find a solution to make that spring be exactly in the center of that hole.

[James.Youmatz]

Hi @rwillardphil,

I've been racking my brain on how to go about this, please don't think I've forgot about you! I think the easiest course of action now is if you can share a copy of the file with me so I can try to see if I can't figure it out from the model. Unfortunately, me just arbitrarliy creating coils does not seem to be accomplishing the goal here so why not attack it from the source! One thought I had in relation to joint origins is to create a sketch on a piece of the coil and sketch to the center since you know the diameter. Then, you will have a point to create the joint origin on. Again, just a thought, but if you could share the model with me at james.youmatz@autodesk.com that'd be great.

Thanks,

[James.Youmatz · Accepted solution]

Hi @rwillardphil,

So the easiest workaround that I can think of is as follows:

• Sketch on the flat face of the coil (where it ends)
• Draw a line that is equal to the radius in length ( .1 in) directly to the center of the coil. May have to toggle your views in order to get it to snap correctly.
• Create a Joint Origin based on the center point created by the sketched line in the previous step
• Re-Orient the joint origin if needed
• Create a Revolute Joint

I went ahead and made a screencast that details how to go about those steps: 

Hopefully this answers all of your questions. Obviously the most convenient way to go about this issue would be to just have more options when editing the coil. One thing you could try to do is post this as a feature enhancement in our IdeaStation and try to gain support for it so that it may get implemented!

The link to our IdeaStation is: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-ideastation-request-a/idb-p/125/tab/most-recent

[radzimir]

Don't use coil at all.

Use swipe along twisted surface: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-ideastation/coil-improvement/idc-p/8577691/highlight/true#...

Hint: while creating twisted surface, first create path-sketch on one plane, then profile-sketch on a plane angled by 90° to profile plane. Creating path and profile on same sketch (same plane) do not worked for me. In theory, it could be a bug because line has no normal vector, so it should be irrelevant on witch plane it is drafted.

There are many improvement ideas on IdeaStation for coils, that means for me, that coil-operation is at current stage of development more annoying than useful. Fortunately we have workaround.

[chrisplyler]

Then sketch a circle in the coil's Component, and you can joint to the center point of that sketch circle.

[thomasa88]

@radzimirI'm trying to use your method, but I can't figure out what sketches I should draw. Would you mind sharing some images how to create the twisted surface?