Add Existing Spring to Assembly File

[Anonymous]

Hi there!

I hope you guys can help me. I have a pre-designed sprint part file that I want to add to my assembly file, but I am having some issues!

The spring is essentially there for keeping tension on some plates, a rod goes through the spring and is held in place by a split-ring:

plates - spring - splitring with a rod running through the lot. I can't seem to add a spring like I would any other component using offset. I should point out I don't need any dynamics or simulation for the spring, but it does need to be in the diagram for illustritive purposes. I tried adding a circle sketch to the end of the srping but the spring was designed using the wire thickness of the spring as the starting point sketch, so it isn't much use to me!

Thanks!

Autodesk 2013

[JDMather]

If you designed the spring correclty (you could have attached the *.ipt file here and removed all doubt) you should have a (hidden) X, Y or Z origin Axis running right down the middle.  Use this to Mate and also a Tangent to the wire or another Mate to an Origin workplane.

[Anonymous]

Hi, thanks for getting back! I should mention I did not design the spring I am using a catologue file provided by Kimball-Physics, I attatch the sping file in this post. by the looks of it they created the spring by creating one circle sketch and "helix-extrudig" the circle from there.

I tried adding a second work plane orthogonal to the circle sketch, but that produced some very odd results.

[JDMather · Accepted solution]

No additional workplanes, axis or sketch needed.  Simply expand the Origin folder and use the existing work geometry.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that! New to autodesk still trying to figure my way round this beast!

All the best

QP