Flanged Elbow Woes

[Paul.Hellawell]

Hi all,

Can someone take a look at my Flanged Ductile Iron family (theres ebeer in it for you !). Its just not working for me. Its quite complex in that it refers to a table for the manufacturer sizes for different bend angles. I have all the other fittings working, just not the elbow. It seems to work fine in the family editor, but when I load it into a project and use it, it never stays at the right angles (it always adds a little to each bend!). I have remade it in many ways, it always does the same. I don't understand why a 90 degree angle doesn't give me 90 degrees !

Thanks in advance.

[Avatart]

Hi all,

Can someone take a look at my Flanged Ductile Iron family (theres ebeer in it for you !). Its just not working for me. Its quite complex in that it refers to a table for the manufacturer sizes for different bend angles. I have all the other fittings working, just not the elbow. It seems to work fine in the family editor, but when I load it into a project and use it, it never stays at the right angles (it always adds a little to each bend!). I have remade it in many ways, it always does the same. I don't understand why a 90 degree angle doesn't give me 90 degrees !

Thanks in advance.
No eBeer for me, I have a similar problem. I am trying to make a generic copper elbow, I can get it to size OK, but it will only show as a 90deg elbow in a pipe run (unless I manually change it) and pipes will not run normal to the end (see piccy). What am I doing wrong?

[Avatart]

No eBeer for me, I have a similar problem. I am trying to make a generic copper elbow, I can get it to size OK, but it will only show as a 90deg elbow in a pipe run (unless I manually change it) and pipes will not run normal to the end (see piccy). What am I doing wrong?
Quick update on my problem:

Something wierd happened, when I changed the angles of the elbows manually to the correct angle, the pipes snapped into place, leading me to think that I have some parameters in the wrong order somewhere.

See attached piccy for how it looks now and I have also attached the offending family file:

[mabrey]

Hello,

Both of you are missing one key feature (which I don't think is documented very well in the tutorials) to make your elbows behave correctly. The axis of the connectors must intersect at the origin for any given angle. For example if you look at the attached pdf of the first elbow family posted you will see that at a 45 deg angle the projected connector intersection is slightly off of the origin reference plane intersection. Take a look at the standard elbow family that comes with RMEP and specifically, look at the parameters for "Center Spacing" and "Center Radius." Flex the angle of the family and notice that at any angle if you trace the connectors to find the intersection, it is exactly at the origin.

Hope this helps,

Jon

[Avatart]

Hello,

Both of you are missing one key feature (which I don't think is documented very well in the tutorials) to make your elbows behave correctly. The axis of the connectors must intersect at the origin for any given angle. For example if you look at the attached pdf of the first elbow family posted you will see that at a 45 deg angle the projected connector intersection is slightly off of the origin reference plane intersection. Take a look at the standard elbow family that comes with RMEP and specifically, look at the parameters for "Center Spacing" and "Center Radius." Flex the angle of the family and notice that at any angle if you trace the connectors to find the intersection, it is exactly at the origin.

Hope this helps,

Jon
Now you say it, it makes perfect sense! Why didn't I think of that? :banghead:

[Paul.Hellawell]

Thanks Mabry! This had me stumped for a while now.

[msjca]

So, How do I make the default elbows behave correctly, please?

[msjca]

Oh, maybe I mis-understand. Are you saying that whenever I continue a pipe run, chossing 45 degreees, it will always be off because the 45 will be placed at the point where the end of the 90 degreee ended and and adjust the start of th 45 to be at the other end of that elbow whiel keeping the open end of th 45 where I picked???

(I had expected that the ebow to be inserted such that the 2 pipe lengths (where they connect) would be adjusted so that the elbow would go into place eithout changeing the angl of the 45 degre angl or 90 degree ange pipe runs.)