Chapter 27: Working with Surfaces
FIGURE 27.14The Ruled Surface PropertyManager interface
The Ruled Surface works from the edge of a solid or surface body. The feature has five basic types
of operations that it can perform:l Tangent to Surfacel (^) Normal to Surface
l Tapered to Vector
l (^) Perpendicular to Vector
l Sweep
The Tangent to Surface setting is self-explanatory. The Alternate Face option would be available if
the base shape had been a solid, with a face filling the big elliptical hole. This would make the
Ruled Surface tangent to the bottom face instead of the side.
With the Normal to Surface setting, it tilts up five degrees from the horizontal because the surface
is lofted with a five-degree draft angle at the big end, making a Ruled Surface that is normal. Be
careful of using this setting because it looks close to what you may be hoping for, but is slightly off.
One of the other options may be a better choice, depending on what you are looking for.
The Tapered to Vector setting needs a plane or axis selection to establish a direction, and then the
Ruled Surface is created from that reference at the angle that you set. With a combination of the
Alternate Side button and the arrow direction toggle button next to the plane selection, you can
adjust the cone created by this setting. The interface to make the changes is not exactly clear unless
you use this function often, but it does work.