Today I will teach you how to make a whip in Onshape, the most beautiful and glorious of all CAD systems.
When I’m done with you, you’ll have one of these to share with your loved one:
Just a disclaimer, this one is quite advanced. It requires almost no dimensions, lots of eyeballing it, and features that need to be enabled.
- Add a custom feature into Onshape called “Offset Planes”.
- Use Offset Planes, offset from the Top plane, 4 additional planes, each 5mm apart.
- On the Top plane, sketch a single point 50mm due north from the origin. Create a new sketch on the next plane and create a single point 50mm due east. Then a sketch and a point south, and then west. It should be like this:
- So far so good? Good, because it’s about to get artistic up in here. On the topmost plane, create another point 50mm due north, then a bunch of points to the north-east.
- There is a drop down button at the top for “3D fit spline”. It might be hidden under the Helix button. Use the spline tool and select all of your points in order from bottom to top. Order does matter.
- On the Right plane, sketch a circle 10mm big. Select it’s center, and have it be incident to the point where the spline begins.
- Put your janitor hat on, because it’s time to Sweep! Hit the sweep tool, select your new circle for the region to be swept, then select your spline as the path to follow.
- On the topmost plane, create a sketch. Use the (2D) spline tool. make two splines. Set their first point to be incident to the face of the existing tube/whip.
- Create an offset plane by selecting the Front plane, and the final point of your tube/whip/spline. On this new plane, create two more splines.
- On the face of the tube/whip, draw 4 circles, with their centers being incident to one of each of the splines.
- Make one new sweep for each spline by selecting a circle, and then the corresponding spline. You can’t combine sweeps.
- Make a sketch on the Top plane like so:
Get it as close as you can. Set the revolve line to be incident to the spline. - Revolve! And you’re done.
Here’s my whip if you’re curious.
Let me know if you have any questions. I’m also happy to take requests.