Dimenioning a helical coil---especially pitch

[markschaffer]

Hello.

Can someone enlighten me on how one can dimension a helical coil?  Specifically, I am trying to put the pitch of the coil on the drawing.

I can get inventor to put the number of coils on the drawing but I cannot pick dimensions off of most of the coil.  Also, I cannot get leaders to stay where I want them on the coil.  Inventor keeps putting them wherever it wants to.

Any thoughts?

Inventor Professional 2014 SP 2 (Build 246), 64-bit Edition.

---Mark

[rdyson]

One way, hopefully someone has a simpler way!

[markschaffer]

@rdyson

Thanks.  Is there some way that you can save this as Inventor 2014 files?

From the preview, it appears that you created two work planes in the part model.  How does the information from the distance of two work planes get put into the drawing? (I am a bit of a noob with Inventor and have no idea how to do this.)

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Anyhow, if modifying the model is the only wat to do this, it really doesn't answer the question:  how to dimension the coil.

I could very easily create a user parameter that is the pitch (d9/d3 in this case) and put that in an annotation.

Also, regarding annotations and leaders, I cannot even get the verkakte leader to point to a desired part of the coil, let alone dimension from it.  Every time I try to put the leader on the coil it moves the arrowhead somewhere unexpected.

[rdyson · Accepted solution]

This is why you should always include your Inventor version.
Create the work plane with an offset of d9/d3.
In the idw, right click the ipt under view1 in the browser, include work features.
Dim the work planes. You can hide the planes after dim'ing if you want.

[markschaffer · Accepted solution]

Thanks. I didn't know you could do that!

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@rdyson wrote:
This is why you should always include your Inventor version.
[...]

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Please re-read my original post.  It states the version, service pack and build number.

[rdyson]

And that is why I should read post more thoroughly.