Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

I am producing a design for an artist that will be sent to a laser cutting facility. The a simplified design is in the attached part. The part is linked to a spreadsheet which allows me to vary the width and thickness of the extrusion.

Now I need to remove pieces of the basic design to match the artist's design. (I've also attached a sample of the artist's early designs to give an idea of what the final piece will look like.) This is where I run into trouble. I've tried:

- Trimming the solid, but I need to be able to trim a completely bounded region on the x-y plane.

- Trimming a sketch of the whole thing, made using the circular pattern tool. However, I cannot trim an associative circular pattern and removing association also removes constraints on the patterned elements, meaning the spreadsheet no longer controls dimensions.

- Trimming a sketch made with equations curves, but apparently it is impossible to trim equation curves (except at their ends)

- I've also tried to make the sketch using the mirror and copy functions to no avail.

Help Please?

Thank you!

(Technical note: the entire design is comprised of 24 CW and 24 CCW logarithmic spirals which expand by the golden ratio over a rotation of 22.5 degrees. The spirals are approximated by circular arcs. The full 24-spiral part was too large to attach, so the attached part only has half the spirals.)

[#2]

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dticehurst wrote:

 The full 24-spiral part was too large to attach, so the attached part only has half the spirals.

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Roll up the EOP before zipping and it will be small enough to attach here.

Several possible techniques.

Might use Grill to create.  (don't know if that will help in this case)

Might Project Geometry the pattern onto a new sketch and then Break Link to allow trimming (downside is loss of associativity).

Probably a couple of other techniques if one of these don't help.

In the artwork it doesn't look like there would be all that much cutting by Extrude-Cut.

[#3]

Thank you for the prompt reply. I'm making some progress with extrude-cut and supressing occurences in patterns.

Didn't know about rolling up EOP- neat!

[#4]

A few general questions pertaining to the part I'm still working on:

- What does a teal colored curve in the sketch environment mean? (see attachment)

- (In the sketch environment) Suppose I have an equation curve that is intersected several time by other curves. Can I use the trim tool to remove a portion of the equation curve between two intersections? I cannot get this to work with equation curves.

- Suppose I have a surface that is intersected several time by other surfaces. Can I use the trim surface tool to remove a portion of the first surface between two intersections? I can only get this tool to define one "cutting surface"

[#5]

...Of course I'm using the default "winter night" color scheme.