OK, you ask yourself. Why would I want to do this? Why would I want to add texture to the outside of a tube or more accurately a cylider with a hole in it? Well, I’m goin got tell you.
After I created my initial ball joint design for my first 3D printing project, I realized I wanted to add some texture to the cap so it’s easier to grip. I figured some raised areas around the cap would add that grip and maybe even look good. Adding a repeated feature is what Patters are for. I used the Circular Pattern feature to do this. This feature is found under the Create menu of the SKETCH tab. Here’s how I did it.
First I created a circle with the same diameter as my cap. I got the caps diameter by selecting the measure tool and then selecting the outer face of the cap. The Radius is 11.55. So, I started a sketch and created a circle with diameter 23.10mm.
Next I drew a line from the center point past the outside of the circle. Press the x key to make this a reference line. Then create a line on either side also extending beyond the edge of the circle. You should have something like the image below.
Now, select the 2 outside lines and then Symmetry from the Constraints menu, select 1 of the outer lines and then the center reference line. The angle between the selected line and the reference line will be displayed and can be changed. For my example I used 5 degrees. Press return and both lines will come together to form a wedge.
Next draw a line horizontally between the 2 outer lines of the wedge shape. Put it somewhere outside the edge of the circle. You can use the Horizontal constraint if you want to make sure it is horizontal. Next press d (dimention) select the center point of the circle and the line and move the mouse to the left or right of the wedge. In the value box enter how far you want the top of the wedge to be from the center of the circle, I chose 12.5mm so the features would be 1mm tall. Now you should have something like this.
Next select Circular Pattern from the CREATE menu. Select Objects from the dialog and then select the 3 sides of the wedge. Next select Center Point and select the center of your circle. You can adjust the angular spacing, I used 306 degrees and the number of things to use, I used 10. The tool creates 10 evenly space wedges.
I wish I had known about this when I made my coffee filter funnel. What I did was way more complicated. It was basically the same idea but I did it all manually.
Next I selected the outer skin of the lid and then selected Align from the MODIFY menu. I selected the center point, which shows up when you select a something round. For the point to align to I selected the center point of my circle. This aligned the 2 circles at the center point. This will put the bottom of the lid on top of the circle. In my case I wanted the texture to start just up from the edge so I selected the lid and used the move tool to bring it down 1mm.
Be sure the lid is correctly centered. Do an align again if your not sure, you’ll know you were off a little if some of the texture features don’t join the main body. In that case, back up to the point before the extrusion and make sure the 2 circles are aligned correctly.
That’s all there is to it. I’m sure there are some things I could have done to make this even easier. My advice is to just try stuff. If you have something you like save a version and then go at it, if you mess it all up, just recover to the last good version and start again.
So that’s why you might want to add texture to the outside of a tube.