Tutorial - Steering Wheel

Transcription

1 Tutorial - Steering Wheel (written by Jacob Tremmel, Student at Altair) This tutorial is about modeling (CAD) and rendering of a Steering Wheel with Altair s solidthinking Evolve

2 Modeling 1. At first, set the Units to Centimeters: Help > Preferences > Unit 2. Select the Front view and draw a circle with the radius 15. Be sure to choose the axes origin as center. 3. Draw a second circle and input the value 1.2 for the radius. 4. Click the Pipe-Tool and pick the smaller circle as profile curve and the bigger circle for extrusion path curve collector. The wheel should now appear and look like this: 5. Before drawing the middle part, select the wheel in the world browser and hide it from view and disable picking. The symbols for these actions sit above the world browser. 6. Now draw a sphere in the axes origin. Input the value 6 for the radius. 7. Select the sphere and notice the Modeling Tool Panel. Enlarge the number of Points along long. and Points along lat. to 10. Now there are more control points that you can modify to alter the sphere. 2

3 8. Switch to the Edit Points Mode (Alt + Spacebar). Mark some particular points and adapt the appearance of the former sphere to your personal imagination of the inner part of the steering wheel. Thereby use the different views to mark points of a specific plane. The result could for example look like this: 9. In terms of the spokes, we first create the one in the middle and then handle the others as we model the right one and use the mirror-tool to create the other one on the left. 10. Select the Top view and draw an ellipse. Use the Translate function to place it somewhere in the middle of the former sphere. 11. Draw another ellipse in the same view. Use the Translate function this time, to place it inside of the wheel. Assure to define the origin as center of the ellipses. 3

4 12. If you wish to have more influence on how the spoke will blend, draw a third ellipse roughly in between of the former sphere and the wheel. After changing in the wireframe visualization, your model could look like this: 13. To generate a volume, just click the skin icon. The console prompts Pick curves to skin. Pick the ellipses as shown in the image above. In doing so, always be aware that the order of your selection is important. Activate the checkboxes named Start cap and End cap to actually get a volume. 4

5 14. Although the volume was obviously created, you are still able to change every value of the ellipses (for example the radius) and the volume will update automatically. 15. Try to position the ellipses differently until you are satisfied with the appearance of the spoke. Now the spoke in the middle may look like this: 16. The spoke on the right is created in the same way apart from that the profile curves are not ellipses, but NURBS curves. This way you have more anchor points to control the appearance. It is also possible to draw asymmetric curves. 5

6 17. Choose the mirror tool for the spoke on the right. The console prompts Pick objects to mirror: After you selected the right spoke object, be sure to activate the Front view, as you need to define the mirror plane next, and press the spacebar. Now click two points on the z axis at any position. After this action, the steering wheel should look about like this: 18. At first moment the model appears to be finished. But the steering wheel still consists of separate objects and needs to be combined if meshing and analysis is required. 6

7 19. Use the Boolean Tool to combine the spokes with the former sphere at first. To perform the union, pick the single volumes and press the spacebar to end. Now do the same with the (currently created) combined object and the wheel. 20. If you want to export your model go to File > Save As and choose any format. For further editing in for example Hypermesh choose preferably the STEP format because this includes information on volumes, but the IGES format is also possible. Rendering This chapter will give attention to rendering, a possibility to turn the outer appearance of CAD objects (almost) to reality. Therefore use any solidthinking Evolve model or, as done in this Tutorial, the steering wheel that was examined in the previous chapter. 1. For the background you can decide whether you want to select a scene with preset settings from the models window or you draw a surface on the xy plane and define materials and lights on your own. The offered scenes in the model window contain lights and shadows already. 2. Choose any scene from the models window and double click it to apply. Perhaps a window opens with different options. Click merge to add the selected scene to the settings you set before. 7

8 3. If you have a look to the perspective view (above), something should attract your attention immediately: The steering wheel was built up concentric to the origin. Thus the half it is covered by the ground plane. 4. Use the Translate function to slide the steering wheel in z direction until it is visible completely. 5. If you like to underline the association to a real steering wheel use the Rotate function. Therefore choose the x axis for the rotation axis and input a small value for the angle. 6. To stress your own creation, if you like, draw a small emblem and combine it with your steering wheel. 7. Change any values of the light or the ground surface using the Shading manager (Managers > Shading or Ctrl + 3). 8. At last select the different objects one after the other and choose any material (from the material manager) by double clicking it. The materials can still be edited by making use of the shading manager afterwards. 8

9 9. To preview the rendering, go to Render > Render current view. If you are not satisfied with the render settings, click Render > Options and adjust the size. If you want to change the file format, go to the Shading manager and switch to the panel named Output. 10. You can overview and save your renderings in the Browse renderings window you find in the Menu Render. 11. Notice that the number of saved images depends on the settings at Help > Preferences > General. Is the denoted number reached, the program starts from the beginning and overwrites the existing images. 9