Hi all,
I am having difficulty drawing a simple coil spring. In attempting to create the basic spiral, along which I think I have to 'one rail sweep solid', I can only see a flat spiral tool called 'spiral spline'. The online user guide shows this tool on page 197, and shows a subset tool called 'helix spline' and another called 'helix path spline' immediately following. I am not able to access these other two tools as separate entities. When I select the spiral spline tool, I can draw a flat spiral (pick a start point and diameter point) with a pitch and diameter, but the data entry toolbar changes to show two additional entry boxes labelled 'length' and 'draft angle' which are shown in the 'helix spline' tool entry in the user guide. When I enter data into these windows, nothing happens apart from the flat spiral going from selected to unselected. I'm not real good at adding pictures, so I hope this is enough to enable someone to suggest something helpful.



I am using ViaCad6, build 786, not a beta build, on a Macbook.
Regards, Ian.

Hi Ian,

I am using a PC but I think it is the same on the mac:-

At the top left you will see an icon of the current tool. You can either, left click the little arrow (bottom right of the icon) and select the correct tool (pic01) or left click the actual icon and drag out the the icon bar for those tools.(pic02)


regards,

- Steve