Bill Thompson

While it is true IronCAD cannot dimension to interpolation points of a spline, there is a way to get its overall length. All 3D Curves provide the overall length in their properties page. Therefore, from the extrude intellishape you can drill down to the edge of interest, right click and choose "Create 3D Curve", view the properties for the 3D Curve and then delete it. John Ohanian IronCAD Development

If you were looking down on the spiral from above (top view), it is rotating counter clockwise. You can tell by the decrease/increase of size of the outer ring as it spins due to perspective rendering (it also helps that I made the model). Yes you can assume that the spiral is rigid, and not changing its geometry in any way while it's spinning. John Ohanian IronCAD Development

Here are some results I got from the 3D Curve import. These spirals have 1000 imported points. I used the Archimedean spiral equation (polar) and then translated it into x,y,z coordinates. The equation is: Radius = a * Angle ^ (1/n) where a and n are constants n=1 is a Archimedes' spiral (what I used) n=2 is a Fermat's spiral n=-1 is a Hyperbolic spiral n=-2 is a Lituus (Refresher) To translate polar coordinates to cartesian (x,y,z) use the following equations: x = radius * cos(angle) y = radius * sin(angle) The first one is just a flat spiral, the second is the same spiral with an incremental increase in the z direction. I found that I could also successfully import 2000 points, but at 10000 and 5000 the ACIS and Parasolid Faceter failed (might be complexity or sheer number of points, not sure). John Ohanian IronCAD Development

With the new 3D Curve/Sweep, you can import 3d points to generate a 3D BSpline Curve. 3D Curves can be swept to produce solid geometry and can be queried for their length (3D Curve Property Page). The hard part is generating the 3D points to import. It looks like Paul is working on this? Once you have determined the mathematical equation used to calculate the points, you can generate a set of points using a spreadsheet. Saving the points as a tab delimited file will then give you the final product to import into IronCAD. John Ohanian IronCAD Development

If you must supply .x_t (Parasolid) files to a vendor, you could model the part with complex 3D sweeps in ACIS, and when the part is finished, make a copy of the file, combine the shapes (lose history), and switch kernels. I bet that would work. It's probably not that Parasolid cannot handle the resulting geometry, just the 3D sweeping process to get to that end result. John Ohanian IronCAD Development

Thought some customers might be interested in this... Some developers and quality assurance testers here at IronCAD LLC got together to do a design project using all 3 of the new InnovationSuite products. We took apart a lawn mower transmission, split up the parts between us, and modeled each individual part in IronCAD or Inovate. We used TeamVault as our central location for collaboration (multiple designers working on the same parts, tracking changes in the product) and file storage (check-in/check-out from IronCAD/Inovate, searching, linked part/where used queries). I've attached a zip of some rendered images of the final product. Enjoy! John Ohanian IronCAD Development