Perforations how to?

[annaromanovska]

Hello all. I'm trying to add perforations and the best way I thought of so far is to create a small body and pattern it around the path, then subtract those bodies from the larger one. However it's time consuming and cumbersome. Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks,

Anna

[innovatenate]

A good suggestion may be to pattern a feature using the 'along a path' option. In this scenario, you would create one extrude cut feature and a sketch to represent the path of the perforation, and then use the Model > Create > Pattern along path feature to copy this extrude cute feature along a the sketch path. Please note that the path may need to be continuous and tangent, so you may have to add small fillets at any sharp corners. This may or may not be necessary. 

Please let me know if this helps or if you have any other questions.

Thanks,

[Phil.E]

As Nathan says, Pattern on Path will work for extrude-cut or holes. There is a critical setting that gives this command a lot of flexibility: Orientation.

Identical

Path Direction

Also you may find the need, especially for non planar paths, to move the path origin closer to the feature being patterned (by dragging it).

Let us know if this helps!

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