Helical Pattern - normal to path

[Anonymous]

Hello Community,

I'm quite new to Inventor (started learning last week) and I came across a problem.

While trying to model the tracks of a roller coaster, to make a loop I'm trying to do a pattern towards a helical path.

It almost worked, the pattern created is following the orientation of the helical sketch, but only in one direction.

Is it possible to have the pattern following a path and add a constrain (maybe?) to always be normal to a face?

Is there another way of doing it?

Please find the IPT and screenshots below.

Ps. I'm using Inventor 2017.

[SBix26 · Accepted solution]

Your model is seriously underconstrained, so it's not likely to behave very well for you as you proceed with your design.  This is pretty basic stuff.

In any case, the immediate problem that you're having is that your Extrusion 1 feature was created on the XY plane, which is not perpendicular to the helix-- it's off by about 8.7°.  I rearranged your feature tree a bit, created a workplane perpendicular to the helix at its end point, then redefined Sketch 2 to use that workplane instead of XY.  Now the pattern occurrences stay aligned properly to the helix.  I didn't fix the other sketches, though. 

I recommend that you start over and really constrain each sketch completely before you create a feature with it.  Note that the helix is also not completely constrained.  You'll need to create and include some other sketch geometry to help with that.

---

Sam B
Inventor Pro 2020.1 | Windows 7 SP1
LinkedIn

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much for the input @SBix26.

I'll try to replicate your solution.

On the topic of underconstrainment, do you have any recommend tutorial on working with constrains/planes?

As my first time working with this software (or any similar, I only have experience in AutoCAD) I really don't know which constrains will work better/worse for my goals and when to apply them...

[SBix26]

Tutorials provided with Inventor 2017 should be very helpful to get you started.  Check out the Get Started tab.  There are also a lot of tutorials on YouTube, of greatly varying quality.  Check out The CADWhisperer and TFI, especially this one.

---

Sam B
Inventor Pro 2020.1 | Windows 7 SP1
LinkedIn

[Anonymous]

Once again, thank you very much!