Wednesday, March 18, 2009

How to model a 3D thread (screw) in AutoCAD?

Although 3D threads (nut/bold) are usually not modelled in detail and CAD applications like Inventor have internal functions for representing threads, sometimes you may need to really model a true 3D thread in AutoCAD.
The easiest way is to use a combination of the HELIX and SWEEP modelling commands.
First prepare a profile of a single thread (e.g. a filleted triangle), 3DROTATE it to be perpendicular to the sweep path, and then sweep this profile along a 3D spiral created by the Helix command.
In older versions of AutoCAD you can also use the 3DSPIRAL Lisp utility (see the Download section).
You can also use of the threaded blocks in our CAD blocks library.

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