Helices

Wire, surface, and solid helixes can be generated about an axis, with one or two clicks of the mouse. The axis can be any of the Cartesian (orthogonal) axes, or any line, or any segment of a previously drawn object. Scaling factors can be applied to a helix, and both scaling and rotational parameters can be applied to the source shape of surface or solid helixes.

 

 

Wire (left), surface (center), and solid (right) helixes without and with scaling and rotational parameters applied to them.

 

 

Wire helixes can also be generated along any path line, arbitrarily positioned in 3D space. These helixes can subsequently be used as paths for sweep operations. These operations are ideal for creating objects such as freely flowing phone cables.