Assembly ellipsoidal face tangency contstraint? Cam lobes.

[Ken226]

I can't find a function for constraining the face of a camshaft eccentric tangent to the face of another part. Anyone know of any workarounds for this?

I can constrain the roller to the lobe, but it will only follow the radius of the portion of the lobe I selected when i constrained it. It won't follow the lobe along its face. Any of you Super Users found a workaround or trick?

 

[HaroldL]

Try this: When creating the lobe profile use a spline instead of arc segments. That will make the lobe face a continuous surface. It may help to create the arcs controlling the lobe shape as reference figures then lay the spline over them.

 

[Ken226]

Try this: When creating the lobe profile use a spline instead of arc segments. That will make the lobe face a continuous surface. It may help to create the arcs controlling the lobe shape as reference figures then lay the spline over them.

Ok, I'll give it a shot. Thanks.

 

[HaroldL]

Just so you know though, there is no tangent constraint for ellipses created with a spline I thought I read that one is being added to v25 for sketch constraints, could be wrong though.

 

[Ken226]

Just so you know though, there is no tangent constraint for ellipses created with a spline I thought I read that one is being added to v25 for sketch constraints, could be wrong though.

It was worth a try, but it didn't work. Using a spline over reference geometry made for an excellent, seamless cam lobe. But now Alibre doesn't seem to recognize any part of the lobe face as being a constrainable. All the buttons are greyed out.

 

[HaroldL]

But now Alibre doesn't seem to recognize any part of the lobe face as being a constrainable. All the buttons are greyed out.

Yup, as I noted. Maybe @Max could give some update when that will be available. I recall comments to the effect that an ellipse constraint was needed for assemblies and I thought a request was entered to Support.