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oXDemosthenesXo posted:The one group that always gets me is the ~~~designers~~~. They know just enough to be confident they understand, but not enough to recognize that their perpetual motion machine won't work. JUST WATCH THIS ONE YOUTUBE VIDEO IT TOTALLY WORKS GUYS YOU JUST HAVE TO GET THE MAGNETS POSITIONED IN EXACTLY THE RIGHT PLACE
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Aug 27, 2021 21:40
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 20:32 |
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Context: Solidworks, ProE, etc. Not sure if Fusion is different. When creating a part, you generally create a base body and add or subtract from it, so it remains one body as you model it. But you don't have to add to it, you can create a second body next to it, touching or not. They're just more features, like extrusions, but they are separate bodies. This can be useful. I use multi body parts most often in welded structural or sheet metal parts, where it's a single part when finished, but made up of a few parts that are permanently attached together. I do not want to make it an assembly, and assign an individual part number to each piece of it, because those parts will never, ever be used in the product as individual pieces, and they won't be stocked as replacements either. The final part is always one piece. And the really cool thing about it is that when you go to manufacture it, the drawing can have views that reference the individual bodies rather than the whole thing. So on page 1 you'll have the welded assembly, and on additional pages you'll have the details of each individual piece, without having to assign multiple file names, create a BOM, and manage workflow and data files for individual part numbers that are never used elsewhere. So yeah for the most part you want a part to be a single body. But multi-body parts have their place. In terms of data, a part is a single file. Within that part file you can have a single body, or multiple bodies. And the bodies are basically individual parts, but they're all modeled together on the screen at the same time, related to each other. Here's an example of a multi body part. The ears on the ends are cut out of plate and the large holes are added, and the tube is cut to length. Then the ears are welded on to the tube, and the faces of them are machined to make them parallel to each other and compensate for warping and bad fixturing. Then all the holes are drilled. Having all that info saved in a single file is way more manageable. Plus the geometry is related but the references can't be broken because the bodies are all saved in the same part. It's kind of like having a mini-assembly with no movement functionality. LloydDobler fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Sep 21, 2021 |
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Sep 21, 2021 21:56
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Hadlock posted:Ok I think I've mostly gotten over my fear of fusion 360, thanks to this thread I've designed two houses in Solidworks and I can honestly say using 3d modeling to design architecture and framing really kinda sucks. I'm absolutely confident there are better tools out there to do it, I'm personally too lazy to look for them. I'm experienced enough with Solidworks that I make it work but when you dig in to it it's really obviously not the tool for it. Editing is a total pain in the rear end, whether it's simply moving the walls around in the floor plan or dealing with features like doorways and fixtures. Same with alternate versions of things. Maybe I haven't explored all the ways to simplify things like using single line sketches extruded as thin sections instead of sketching the full outlines of the walls, things like that. But again, that's like using the claw of a hammer to turn a bolt. You can get it done, but a wrench is much better. On the flip side, I do have a model of my house that's accurate to within an inch of reality and that's a huge help when doing things like figuring out how to run new wiring or plumbing and if it's possible to get loving ethernet in to my bedroom without tearing up the downstairs drywall (it's not). If there's no better free tool, you can get it done with solid modeling software.
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Sep 28, 2021 17:35
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Yeah, the hardest part of switching CAD platforms is the naming conventions and button locations.
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Sep 30, 2021 20:02
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meowmeowmeowmeow posted:
Are you using 3d sketches? If not you may want to try that. They can be tricky to learn but are super useful for things like you're describing, if I'm understanding it correctly.
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Oct 17, 2021 17:37
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meowmeowmeowmeow posted:Yeah it's all in a 3d sketch One trick I've been using a ton of lately is instead of offsetting things and adding planes, is using a poo poo-ton of construction lines. If you put some along-axis constrained construction lines between other lines and points, you can set them all equal and then at least you only have one dimension to edit to change all your offsets. And if your shapes are parametric, you can even set it equal to the desired leg of your shape and it'll change with the tube size. Do you have a picture of what you're trying to accomplish?
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Oct 19, 2021 20:34
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meowmeowmeowmeow posted:Again, there are easy work arounds to get the profiles to line up, but it sure would be nice if the weldments tool could account for some stuff like this. If it does and I'm unaware, please let me know. I just tried playing with it and yeah sometimes a secondary hidden sketch is the most elegant workaround to a problem like that. You can choose the profile alignment, but what you need is to pick a different alignment at each end of the member sketch line, and they don't allow that. So your sketch does have to perform the offset for you at one end. Sorry not to be more help.
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Oct 21, 2021 20:59
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meowmeowmeowmeow posted:
meowmeowmeowmeow posted:I also feel like I recently figured out the point of driven dimensions, they always confused the poo poo out of me but are super useful to note out a couple of key measurements that aren't how you want to define the part but are helpful as reference measurements and not having to reselect geometry for the measure tool for the sixth time in five minutes. Same with editing parts in place in an assembly, with some good section view placements its great for getting clearances and stuff right without a piece of paper of random dimensions as a reference list while tabbing between a ton of different parts. Another great use of driven dims is you can toggle a dim back and forth, so you can drag a sketch around without having to delete/re-dimension it. Or you can find your overall dimension by toggling it and dimensioning something else. Like I'll figure out that I want a step to be 3/8" so I'll turn the overall length to driven, then put 3/8" on the step, then delete it and re-drive the dimension. There are times when it makes a lot more sense than what I just described, but something like that. Basically quicker than breaking out a calculator.
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Nov 2, 2021 23:22
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Another trick for doing cams (from before the cam mate existed) is to draw your cam, then create a sketch and offset the profile by the radius of the follower, then do a path mate with a single sketch point at the center of your cam follower. Then just hide the sketches. it also does fewer goofy mate reversals than the cam motion does when dragging it around.
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Nov 15, 2021 22:04
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You see that more and more professionally, and it infects everything. I can't get the super smart young guy at my work to put any thought in to his parts or drawing style, to him if it's technically correct then gently caress off. Never mind that his drawings generate more scrap parts than anyone because they're loving hard to read. Like he insists that hidden lines are unnecessary. Then he designed a sphere with a hole through it. The part came in with a flat on it, with the diameter of the flat was exactly the diameter of the hole. Sure the hole callout said "thru" but he still created the mistake by not having hidden lines. They add clarity to the part, they're not unnecessary. They should be included by default, then if they hinder the clarity of the drawing they should be omitted.
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Dec 23, 2021 01:56
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McMaster apparently is really committing to having CAD models of all their products: https://www.mcmaster.com/1983N13/ I downloaded it, and will stick it somewhere in every project I do from now on.
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Jan 6, 2022 02:37
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A Proper Uppercut posted:I did start messing around with making solids of the plates, but the vast majority of the plates I make have profiles of different shapes top to bottom (4 axis in Wire EDM terms) and doing lofted cuts with complex geometry in SW makes me want to die. If you're not using the surface geometry of the loft cut then what's to stop you from simply making a part with shallow straight extruded cuts on the front and back? The 2d will come out the same. You can even cut them through to each other if you want the smaller profile to not be hidden lines. Dance Officer posted:Not trying to make anything specific, just thought learning SW would be a good way to spend otherwise dead time at work. I want to learn to draw models and tolerance them, seems like it'd be useful. I agree the tutorials are beyond basic. One of the best ways I've found for advancing my own skill in solidworks is to open files made by others and walk through the feature tree to see how they did things. The hardest part of that is ensuring that the file you're reviewing was made by someone competent or not. My 4th job involved a lot of injection molded parts, and before they hired me they were using an outside consultant who was a god drat wizard in solidworks. His models were super efficient with no wasted steps or features (they had to be, they had hundreds) He even took the time to name all the features in the tree and group related features near each other so that it was easy to figure out how far back to roll the model to edit or add something. Doing that as well as learning to modify a part without breaking relations - or even better, learning how to edit broken relations or rearrange feature order is what took me beyond entry level modeling. Then you get the burden of seeing terrible modeling in action. The guy I replaced at my current job was an absolute amateur at solidworks. One of the first parts I re-did had numerous holes that instead of being deleted, were filled with extruded cylinders. Because other holes were dimensioned off the first holes, and he either didn't know how or was too lazy to simply re-dimension them. The base feature was drawn as a 10 sided polygon, and then cut into a cylinder. And it was a part with a pattern of spokes... at multiple points in the feature tree he cut away the pattern, re-drew the base spoke, and then re-patterned it as a separate feature. So the previous spokes were still being modeled. It was a mess, and all his parts were like that. The assembly was massive. Don't be like that guy, learn to edit. LloydDobler fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jan 12, 2022 |
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Jan 12, 2022 21:47
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A Proper Uppercut posted:
Don't extrude them through each other, extrude them up to each other, halfway through the part. You can make the first cut, then on the second cut select "up to surface" and select the bottom of the first cut. It will look exactly right when viewed head on. You need to be looking for the ways to make it work instead of finding ways it can't. Everyone is telling you the same thing, it's the right tool.
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Jan 13, 2022 19:31
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Fillets have been one of the biggest complaints about any 3d software since the beginning, I can't imagine the size of the teams beating on the code to get it even where it is today. And yeah for something that should be straight up math, there really is an art to modeling them. Sometimes you just change the order in the feature tree, sometimes you have to put as many in one feature as you can, sometimes you have to do that one particular fillet as its own feature, etc. I designed injection molded and vacuuformed parts for a while and I never had a part that wasn't able to be beaten into submission eventually, but good lord some just fight you every step of the way.
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Oct 6, 2022 18:46
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oXDemosthenesXo posted:It's also why I insist on assembling my prototypes personally, so that I have a huge incentive to not half rear end the design details.  That and if you do gently caress up you can hide it. *grinds fastener *makes note *fixes the CAD before anyone finds out Is pretty much my SOP. As for the hole wizard and the mass calcs, it took me getting hired and then shamed by the current staff of one job. "You don't use the hole wizard? Hey Scott get a load of this doofus, doesn't use the hole wizard." At least I'm not enough of a dinosaur that I flat out refuse to try things, once they showed it to me I was ashamed of how stupid I was. Hole wizard rules. And for mass calcs all you have to do is weigh a few parts and see how exactly right the prediction is. I've been very impressed with it as long as it has the correct density for the material. And if it doesn't you just edit. LloydDobler fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Oct 21, 2022 |
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Oct 21, 2022 21:17
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There's also the "selection manager" you can bring up with a right click. Which quite frankly I've never taken the time to study and really get good at, the times I've needed it I made it work and then just moved on. But it allows you to click certain portions of an edge or sketch to use as a sweep profile (among other things). If I remember right it's also what you had to use to force a sweep to do a full loop in previous versions. But again, I only use it when I have to and then forget what I did until next time I need it.
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Nov 22, 2022 22:08
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When I want to do a feature that isn't referenced in the assembly I will just create the feature in the part that is a guess at what I want, then edit it in the assembly where I can check the fit.
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Dec 17, 2022 00:58
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oXDemosthenesXo posted:Hoooly poo poo thank you. This is an almost stupidly massive software, with a lot of obtuse poo poo like that. It was 15 years for me before I learned that you can save your button customizations so that you don't have to loving memorize them each time you reinstall or switch computers. They're even portable and easily reversible so you can take them to job interviews or temporary workstations. BTW I highly recommend customizing the mouse gestures, it saves soooooo much time over always moving your mouse to the upper left corner of the screen. For those that don't know what that is, you can put up to 12 commands that are context sensitive wherever your mouse is, and access them by right click/drag. It's hard to remap muscle memory, I have some I've added that I still forget to use. But I'm pretty sure putting the dimension command on it for sketches has saved me cumulative HOURS of mouse movement.
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Feb 19, 2023 19:23
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oXDemosthenesXo posted:My first job was 100% making drawings for an on site machine shop. After I had the basics down I'd take drawings out to the machinists to see if they understood and they'd set me straight pretty quick if I made anything confusing. Same here. Sadly I haven't worked at a company that made their own parts since 2006. Such is the way of things. Also it's hard to tell newbies that their drawing sucks without a greasy old roughneck to back you up. There's more to it than just making sure everything is dimensioned. Is it dimensioned well? Are the dimensions in the place where someone looking to make a feature will naturally look for it? Can they easily picture how the part looks in reality? I work with a guy who has never worked with machinists and he refuses to put hidden lines on his drawings. Claims they taught him that in school because the drawings "look cleaner" and "they really aren't necessary". Que him reworking an entire order of conical spacers because guess what? if you don't put hidden lines on the drawing it looks like there's no hole in it! Sure, the diameter callout says "thru" so it's technically correct - but you hindered clarity and that makes the fuckup your fault. LloydDobler fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Feb 24, 2023 |
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Feb 24, 2023 00:35
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We had a hardware library with the threads configured so that you could either import cosmetic or fully modeled, depending on how pretty and close up your presentation was going to be vs how large the model is. I prefer cosmetic threads because you can grab the cylinder OD for constraints and measurements but I prefer the modeled threads for prettiness when I need a picture to pop.
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Feb 25, 2023 00:29
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Another way to model that for simpler editing is to do a cross shaped cut from the top edge down through all 4 sides at once (or from the bottom up if the cut is always flush with the inner face). Use sketch constraints to make the lines equal length, etc.
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May 18, 2023 23:39
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ryanrs posted:How do I share a sketch across different features in Solidworks? You don't even have to show the sketch, you can just select it out of the feature tree and hit "extrude" or "cut" again. You can then use the "selected contours" option instead of copying and trimming anything. It allows you to use whatever parts of the sketch that you want for each feature. That avoids the broken reference problem mentioned earlier.
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May 19, 2023 16:28
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A Proper Uppercut posted:You guys would probably kill me if you saw how I'm using SW. There's a way to have it not apply relations in the first place if that's how you roll. It's either in settings or you can hold ctrl while you drag and it doesn't auto-constrain.
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Jul 13, 2023 21:36
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oXDemosthenesXo posted:I'm late to the party but have an alternative design suggestion: I was literally just gonna suggest that. Far and away the best solution, except maybe for stairs, but just use a friggin hand dolly like everyone else. Thought experiments are fun but this is way too much brain power being burnt on this very very simple problem. This is one of those cases where you just overbuild it and get on with your life. If you don't use the above suggestion then you just need to cut, fit and drill one piece of 1/4" web structural angle and send it. I mean, you could probably just drill holes in the back face of the base casting and bolt the casters directly to it through two of the four mounting holes and it'd still work better than anything you already thought of.
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Aug 14, 2023 18:32
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Acid Reflux posted:I have so much to learn. The cool part is there's always something new to learn. I used my first 3d modeling software in 1995, started using Solidworks in 2002, and it wasn't until THIS YEAR I learned about the friggin "S" menu. An on screen menu that pops up at your cursor when you type S. You can customize it. It's context sensitive. I was already a really fast user. Now I'm faster. I almost never have to move my mouse to the top of the screen anymore. Keep learning and customizing. And remember to save your menu configuration.
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Oct 22, 2023 22:23
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Some people also call that a "turned" finish, which always bothered me because in machine shop language, turning something is done in a lathe. If you want a specific and reproduceable pattern your best bet is to draw a sketch of it, 2d is probably adequate, and dimension it however you can to communicate exactly what you want. Standard textures and finishes have callouts but if it's not standard it needs to be defined. Otherwise you'll get people interpreting what you want and you'd be surprised not that people think differently than yourself, but just how completely differently they think. I sometimes do a detail view wtih the pattern zoomed in and dimensioned, then a note with an arrow saying "apply texture in detail A to this surface" on every surface you want it on, with orientation notes if needed. I mean, you can also model it but definitely call out the depth of cut and stuff like that. And even very specific callouts don't guarantee results. I've called out engraving .005" deep that I just meant to be a light etch and some doofus carved it in .060" deep with a ball end mill. I find these two axioms to be true: You can never be too clear on a drawing. The parts still might come in wrong. On the other hand, if they're a good computerized shop, you can draw what you want and say "apply texture exactly as shown in supplied CAD file" without any further dimensioning and they will get it right.
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Nov 11, 2023 18:38
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 20:32 |
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Another way is to copy a child proof medicine bottle with multiple teeth that click over a flexible locking tab. Then your padlock goes in a hole to keep the tab from moving. so all your critical parts are on one side, and the cap just has teeth in it.
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Feb 23, 2024 00:14
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