Text wrap around sphere in Inventor 2013

[cjjatpuresilica]

:roll:I am endeavoring to wrap text around a sphere. Following earlier advice by JD Mather I have created an inwards offset surface of 0.5mm and made my solid part invisible whilst executing the function. I am using the 'extrude-cut' function choosing the distance selection of 'to' and selecting the offset surface.

 

Whilst it works some of the time it is extremely fragile and I cannot have a text box which, when viewed in the 'sketch' window is wider than the sphere plus sometimes it is as if it is just having a bad day and refuses to work anyway!

 

As the text has to be varied I have written a simple rule and added a 'text' parameter to update from the rule. This bit works OK except that I constantly have to modify the font size to keep the text box size acceptable.

 

Is there a way of getting my 2D 'text' sketch to effectively wrap around the sphere say by extruding it along a 3D curved path or by some other means, so that the function performs on my sphere as readily as it would on a regular cylinder?

 

Finally I am a newbie to Inventor so please give as much details as possible in your response.

 

Thank you.

[Bishop]

I had almost the same issue exactly toward the end of last year... My solution wasn't particularly elegant, but it worked. Take a look here, see how I did it, and you can probably simplify what I did quite a bit.

[cjjatpuresilica]

Dear Bishop I looked at your post and I downloaded your files but if I am honest I did not fully understand what you had done. Also if I am correct, you only had one letter in the part so did you eventually get text to wrap all the way around? If so, is it possible you could let me see what you have achieved please? I have been on this 5 days (and nights) now for what I would have thought should be a standard feature.

[Bishop]

You can't actually wrap the text on to the sphere. What I wound up doing was repeating what you see there ... for each letter. I did put a little too much work into it when I was making it, and it could have gone a lot easier. Some of the suggestions that JD makes in there will be very useful.

 

What specifically in what I made is giving you problems?

 

I can't actually give you the final product that I made, because it's proprietary.

[Bishop]

Here's a quick model showing how I'd do the same thing again if needed.

 

Again, this only shows one letter. You have to figure out the angular spacing between each letter and create a new work plane / sketch / extrusion for each individual letter. It's a pain in the ass to do, but it's the only way that I've been able to find to make it work.

 

 

Part2.ipt

[Bishop]

... because if it were curved, then it wouldn't be a plane anymore ...

[cjjatpuresilica]

I was simply thinking that a curved plane was a curve that lies in a single plane, or in other words an extension of what JD Mather suggested to you in relation to wrapping the text to a cylinder. But thank you for your help in any event it is greatly appreciated.

[JD Mather]

I don't remember past discussions, but if you want cheat a bit-

Use the Emboss Wrap on a cylinder and then Revolve - Intersect your Sphere.

There will be a slight bit of distortion top to bottom but not so much side to side.

[cjjatpuresilica]

Thank you for your kind suggestion although I was not able to get it to work, for in the end if I used the ‘intersect’ option I was simple left with a ring of text and if I chose the ‘new solid’ option it produced a sphere with my text extruding from the surface.

 

However, I did find this retrospective solution worked, as follows:

 

Essentially I had taken JD Mather’s earlier advice to ‘Bishop’ on this same topic but I was not happy that it generated a flat face to the inside surface of the text engraving rather than a spherical parabolic face as I required.

 

Whatever order I produced my sphere in i.e. as the first solid but only partly revolved so that I could still select the cylinder required to emboss the text on to, or as the last operation; it always required the previous / subsequent task to be ‘reverse engineered’ to achieve the desired result.

 

This is the method that I chose and have subsequently repeatedly modified my text with 100% success:

 

I created my sphere sketch (1) including construction lines depicting the position of my required engraved text including a point marker for the subsequent engraving w/plane position but did not use the sketch at this stage.

 

 

I then produced my second sketch (2) a thin rectangular section that vertically aligned with the previous construction sketch position of my text, inset by some 5mm from the outer surface of my desired sphere.

 

 

This was the first solid I created by revolving the profile about the common central axis to produce a thin-walled cylinder whose height was sufficient to accept my subsequent embossed text and in-board of the outer surface of the finished sphere

 

 

I then created a work plane tangent to the surface of this cylinder, aligned to the point I had positioned in sketch 1 and used it to generate my text sketch. (3)

 

I centrally positioned my text, within the text editor, choosing not to generate a text-box but instead centrally positioned my text onto the point in sketch 1 by projecting it onto this new sketch using the ‘construction’ option.

 

 

 

It is pertinent to mention at this point that one needs to choose the font carefully to ensure it generates proper outline shapes for Inventor to use and thus if you do have a failure following this guide. this is the first thing to check. Unfortunately the error warnings generated did not make me aware that this could be an interment problem i.e. certain letters failed where others do not and I thus thought it was my entire methodology that was at fault!

 

The next thing I did was to merge my text using the ‘wrap to face’ option and the 'positive selection' to add extruded text around my cylinder; in my case I chose a distance of 7.5mm to ensure it extended beyond the outer face of my final sphere.

 

 

I then produce another cross section sketch (4) with which to generate a new half circle sketch which I dimensioned as just 0.5mm smaller in radius than my final sphere dimension and revolved this around the common central axis to remove both my now unwanted cylinder (sketch 2) and the excess depth of text extrusion. This revolve cut ensured that on complete the inside face of my text would be a true parabolic dish accurately reflecting the outer surface of my sphere.

 

 

This is as far as we need to go and now all one needs to do, is revert to generating the original sketch 1 into the sphere and ‘reverse engineer’ what will now become the subsequent operations as follows:

 

 

Drag the ‘End of Part’ marker up until it resides immediately after sketch 1. This will cause all of the subsequent operations to temporarily disappear.

 

Generate the solid sphere by revolving around the common central axis.

 

Now drag the ‘EoP’ marker to below the Revolve operation performed using sketch 2. Do not worry if this then causes this operation to fail, just chose to ‘Edit Feature’ and modify it to a ‘cut’ operation. This will generate a cylindrical cut inside our sphere.

 

Now drag the ‘EoP’ marker down to below the Emboss operation, once again modifying the ‘Feature’ so that it now cuts the text.

 

Now drag the ‘EoP’ marker down below the last revolve operation (sketch 4) and once again, modify the ‘feature’ so that this time it adds i.e. it removes the unwanted 'cylinder' and the excess text engraving back to the ‘parabolic’ surface 0.5mm below the surface of your sphere.

 

I have subsequently added a ‘User Text Parameter’ controlled by a simple rule linked to an external Excel spreadsheet with which to edit my ‘text sketch’ as I have a need to generate literally thousands of variations of text.

 

 

 

Plan view of finished engraved text.

 

 

Cross section showing constant depth engraving with parobolic inside face.

 

 

Should anyone need clarification, please let me know.

Edited August 3, 2012 by cjjatpuresilica