Marble Roller Coaster Create Straight Segment (Part 5 of many) [VIDEO]

Create Straight Segment

To read the previous article of this series, CLICK HERE.

To create a new part from this library part, double click it in the design library, then save as, call the first one Straight.sldprt.

Insert a sketch on the largest face of the female connector:

Draw a circle for each rail.  A trick shown here, if you hover over the circular edge it wakes up the centerpoint, then click the center point to make the circle concentric.  If you click on the circular edge now it will not fully define the circle, but if you click where that edge meets another edge, you can make a coincident relation that will fully define the circle.

This straight section will eventually have multiple configurations for different lengths.  To ensure we can configure the length a blind extrude should be used, without merging entities.  The reason for this is that the move/copy bodies does not create configurable dimensions, but it can be used to mate the part to the end of the extrude.  Set the extrude depth to 5 inches, deselect merge result, click OK.  Reorder the boss extrude before the male connector.

Edit the move/copy bodies absorbed by Connector Male, click constraints, add a coincident constraint to position the male connector at the end.  Click Add, click OK.  Add a combine feature and add all the bodies together to make this into a single body part.

Double click on the extrude feature, right click on the 5 inch dimension and select configure dimension

Fill out the table as follows.

This creates 10 configurations, where the length is different in each one.  Activate a couple configurations to ensure that they update correctly.

Configuration 2 is shown here.

Save your changes and close.

Watch this video for a demonstration of this workflow: