Surf and Code: Solid Edge Surfacing: Tennis Ball

In this tutorial, you learn how to model a tennis ball and the groove as shown in image below:

Full list of Solid Edge surfacing tutorials on this blog is here.

Disclaimer:
• This tutorial and the steps illustrated herein are by no means claimed to be the best or the only way to create the given design.
• This tutorial is an attempt to introduce and demonstrate the awesome set of tools that Solid Edge has for curve creation and surface manipulation.

Begin with Sketching in the Top(xy) plane. Create a D shape using a line and an arc using Arc by Center or by Trimming a circle with a line.
Start Revolved Protrusion and revolve the arc 360 deg about the line to create a sphere.
Again start Sketching in the Top (xy) plane and create a circle as shown. Create more lines and Trim the part of circle to create a sketch as shown.
Also note that the lines are tangent to the circle/arc. If not, add a Tangent relation.
Start Project Curve and select the sketch created in the last step as the curve to project. Click Accept and select the sphere as the surface to project the curve on. Click Accept again.
For the Reference Plane step, select the Top (xy) plane. Point the arrows in both directions as shown and click.
Note that the sketch gets projected on the sphere forming the profile for the groove typically found on a tennis ball. Hide all planes and sketches.
Select Plane normal to curve and pick the projected curve.
Then pick any point on the curve as shown to place the plane.
Sketch on the newly created plane and draw a small circle. Start Swept Cutout and select the projected curve as the path. Select the circle as the cross section.
Finish the cutout to create the groove as shown. Also Round off the sharp edges of the groove. The next important step is to create a color/material that resembles the tennis ball green.
Select Style and select Face Style from the Style types list. Click New... and name the style as Tennis Ball and select Green from the list for Based On: In the Faces tab, use RGB values as below: Diffuse: 0.74, 0.9, 0.08 Specular: 0.6, 0.76, 0.27 Ambient: 0.7, 0.84, 0.14 Select Part Painter and select Tennis Ball from the Style list and apply it to all faces of the sphere except the groove.
Equally simple and interesting is creating your own, brand new, fully functional CAD system with 3D sketching and surfacing capabilities using a geometric modeling kernel. cMayoCAD from CADVertex is one such program. Download the detailed course contents for cMayoCAD here.