Creating a Variable Radius Fillet

You can create a curved face of a variable radius that is tangent to, and that joins two surfaces using the Variable Radius Fillet command. A variable radius corner means that at least two different constant radii are applied to two entire edges.

The command allows you to define the two types of variation to the variable radius fillet : Cubic and linear.

Related Topics
Using the Display Only Parents Option to Retrieve a Creation Context

  1. Click Variable Radius Fillet, local modifier in the Dressup & Modifiers toolbar (Functional Fillets sub-toolbar).

    The Variable Radius Fillet Definition dialog box appears. Default options let you define a Cubic variation of the Variable Fillet.



  2. Select the edge you want to fillet. You can define variable radius fillets on closed edges.

    The application detects both vertices and displays two identical radius values.

  3. Double-click the radius to access the Parameter Definition dialog box. For example, enter 50mm.



  4. Click at the right of the Points box. Select Variable_Plane in the geometry.

  5. Double-click the plane. For example, enter 10mm.

  6. Click OK in Variable Radius Fillet Definition dialog box.



    You can select the Conic parameter check box options which allow you to vary the section of the fillet. For a parameter comprised between or equal to:


    • 0.5, the resulting curve is a parabola.
    • 0 < parameter < 0.5, the resulting curve is an arc of an ellipse.
    • 0.5 < parameter < 1, the resulting curve is a hyperbola.

    Conical fillets do not handle twist configurations. If a twist is detected, the fillet operation fails.

    Conical fillets may produce internal sharp edges due to a curvature discontinuity of the fillet supports. Healing is used to smooth these sharp edges.

    If the fillet surface curvature is lower than the support curvature, fillet surface relimitation may fail. In such cases, the conic parameter has to be decreased.

  7. To edit this fillet, double-click EdgeFillet.1 in the specification tree. Click the More button to access the Limiting element option.



    Important: Four additional options are available. To know how to use:

  8. Click close to Limiting element(s), then select Limit_Plane in the geometry.

  9. Click this arrow to reverse the direction and therefore specify the portion of material that will be kept.

  10. Click OK.

    The variable radius fillet is trimmed to Limit_Plane. The final part looks like this: