Creating a Circular Pattern

You can create a circular pattern using the Pattern command. You need to define the types of parameters you want to specify so that the application will be able to compute the location of the items you copied.

This task shows you how to create a circular pattern.

Related Topics
More About Patterns
Creating a Rectangular Pattern
Creating a User Pattern
Using the Display Only Parents Option to Retrieve a Creation Context

  1. Click Pattern .

    The Pattern dialog box appears.

  2. Click Circular Pattern to access the parameters specific to this type of pattern.



  3. Select Protected Prism.2 as the feature to pattern.



    Important: To define a direction, you can select an edge, a line, a planar face or a plane. After selecting an edge, a line or a planar face, if necessary, you can also select a point to define the rotation center. If you select a plane, selecting a point is mandatory.

  4. Click the Reference element box and select the upper face to determine the rotation axis. This axis is normal to the face. An arrow indicating the direction is displayed on the functional body.

    Tip: Selecting the Reverse button or clicking the arrow reverses the direction.

  5. Enter 7 as the number of instances you want to obtain in the first direction.

  6. Enter 50 degrees as the angular spacing.

    The circular pattern looks like this:

  7. The Parameters box lets you choose the types of parameters you want to specify so that the application will be able to compute the location of the items copied.

    These parameters are:

    • Circle & Circle spacing
    • Circle & crown thickness
    • Circle spacing and crown thickness

    Set Circle & Circle spacing to define the parameters you want to specify.

  8. Enter 2 in the Circles box.



  9. Enter -24 mm in the Circle spacing box.



  10. Enter 2 in the Row in angular direction box.

    The initial protected prism as well as the instance nest to it are slightly moved in the angular direction.

    Entering 2 in the Radial direction box makes the instances of the crown move in the radial direction as illustrated below:



    Important: The Radial alignment of instances option allows you to define the instance orientations. By default, the option is selected, meaning that all instances are normal to the lines tangent to the circle as illustrated below:

    Otherwise, if the option is off, all instances have the same orientation as the original feature.

  11. Click OK to confirm the operation.

    The circular pattern composed of 14 instances is created:



    Circular Pattern.X is added to the specification tree in the Solid Functional Set.X node.

    Tip: Clicking an instance once removes the instance from the specifications.