Variable Thickness Thicken

[bluehelmet]

Hi All,


I'm trying to model a helmet shell in NX but unfortunately I've ran into some engineering requirements that have forced me to greatly increase its thickness.

I would like to be able to vary the thickness of my offset across the shell to reduce its weight and improve its looks but I don't know whether this is achievable in NX.


Essentially, my questions are:


1. can you actually have a variable-thickness thicken operation in NX?


2. if so, how would you implement it? Is it possible to define a coordinate system at a certain point and create a function which defines the thickness of the shells based on x, y, z coordinates of that coordinate system?


If I can't do that then I guess I'll just slice a bit off of it with an extrusionand hope for the best but ideally a variable-thickness thicken would be the most elegant solution!


Thanks for your help!

 

[catchme]

The best way to accomplish your required engineering parameters in my experience would be to create a series of splines along your helmet normal. Once youve created the splines, make them a closed loop through the cross section by creating a spline tangent to the ends of the sections youve made.


Now, once youve completed that, use the Through Curve Mesh function to create a sheet body from your splines. Use this sheet body to split a solid sguare block. This should give you the wall thickness profile your looking for.

 

[szmagd]

You did not give too many details, butI think that another way to get the variable wall thickness would be creating subctract body of the inside with constant wall thicknessoffset and then applyingdifferencial scale factor to it. If you would define axial scale, than one axis direction thickness would remain the same while the other directions would change depending on the value you specify. Also you could play with different scale factors for all 3 axis.


Good luck