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3D printing and Inventor Patterns

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Message 1 of 12
ozitag
908 Views, 11 Replies

3D printing and Inventor Patterns

With the increase in 3D printing technology and the ability to create a solid model/finished part, Inventor needs to be able to create software models that are and not just appear to be what the designer requires. For many years patterns have been a major issue for inventor as they take for ever for the software to calculate. If the number of items resulting from the pattern exceeds 100 then it can take in excess of 15mins to create the pattern. I have seen items in our office take more than 48hours!!! This is very costly for businesses. What I can't work out is why the preview of the pattern can be calculated extremely quickly, but the actual pattern take so long to perform.

This has been an issue for many years now and has been brought up on these forums many times. What do other users do/use to create exact models using patterns? It seems Autodesk hasn't/doesn't want to look into it.

 

Regards,

Still Waiting aka Ozitag

IV 2010
11 REPLIES 11
Message 2 of 12
Mario428
in reply to: ozitag


@ozitag wrote:

With the increase in 3D printing technology and the ability to create a solid model/finished part, Inventor needs to be able to create software models that are and not just appear to be what the designer requires. For many years patterns have been a major issue for inventor as they take for ever for the software to calculate. If the number of items resulting from the pattern exceeds 100 then it can take in excess of 15mins to create the pattern. I have seen items in our office take more than 48hours!!! This is very costly for businesses. What I can't work out is why the preview of the pattern can be calculated extremely quickly, but the actual pattern take so long to perform.

This has been an issue for many years now and has been brought up on these forums many times. What do other users do/use to create exact models using patterns? It seems Autodesk hasn't/doesn't want to look into it.

 

Regards,

Still Waiting aka Ozitag


Actually the parts shown on your screen are complete and not just the appearance of that part and this is the problem when the number of elements making up the part get very high.

You don't seem to know what happens when you make a very large pattern. Every element in your original features must be duplicated in each feature in the pattern. All the math worked out etc etc etc. But when you send the file to a 3-d printer it will produce the part you are looking for including all 100 features in the pattern.

The fact that commanding a pattern takes 30 seconds to do does not mean Inventor can work out all the math that quickly.

 

 

Message 3 of 12
ozitag
in reply to: Mario428

By not complete I meant by using a texture instead of making a pattern of the feature so that it looks like the pattern has been made just by the texture given.

I do realise that Inventor has to calculate all the features, but I'm not so sure that that is all it is doing. Sometimes it seems to take a very long time for quite simple objects. If other systems can do it more quickly (yes they may not be as accurate etc etc I have no idea of how each system calculates it) then surely Inventor can as well. It may also be an area that multiple processors could be used to speed things up.

Regards,

Ozitag

IV 2010
Message 4 of 12
Mario428
in reply to: ozitag

Solidworks has a way of suppressing a large pattern so rebuild time is reduced as long as the pattern stays the same.

But at some point the pattern has to be rebuilt complete or an accurate part cannot be made.

Patterns can be suppressed in Inventor I think while work goes on around it but in the case of a very large pattern I would make it last on the featiure tree and slide the end of part above it while editing other features.

 

But to send the file to a 3D printer the full feature set must be rebuilt and present to get an accurate part

Message 5 of 12
ozitag
in reply to: ozitag

Mario, if your suggestion was true, the time it takes to produce the pattern should be proportional to the number of items being made. This is not the case. I did a simplete test of this.

I made a plate, set a hole in one corner then made a pattern of the hole in the plate then doubled it in each direction . I then measured the time from when I clicked ok to when the pattern was complete and I could see it on the screen. Here are the results.

Pattern 39 x 48 it took 6secs

Pattern 78 x 48 it took 9secs (I was expecting around 12 secs as there is double the number of holes)

Pattern 78 x 96 it took 38secs (If what you were saying held true this should be around 24secs as 4x original number of holes)

Pattern 156 x 96 it took 164secs (What was it doing????)

Clearly the time is exponential, not directly proportional. Why???

Time.png

 

Regards,

Ozitag

IV 2010
Message 6 of 12
mcgyvr
in reply to: Mario428


@Mario428 wrote:

Solidworks has a way of suppressing a large pattern so rebuild time is reduced as long as the pattern stays the same.

 


So does Inventor.. You can simply suppress the pattern and unsuppress it when you are ready to export..



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Inventor 2023 - Dell Precision 5570

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Message 7 of 12
mcgyvr
in reply to: ozitag


@ozitag wrote:

With the increase in 3D printing technology and the ability to create a solid model/finished part, Inventor needs to be able to create software models that are and not just appear to be what the designer requires. For many years patterns have been a major issue for inventor as they take for ever for the software to calculate. If the number of items resulting from the pattern exceeds 100 then it can take in excess of 15mins to create the pattern. I have seen items in our office take more than 48hours!!! This is very costly for businesses. What I can't work out is why the preview of the pattern can be calculated extremely quickly, but the actual pattern take so long to perform.

This has been an issue for many years now and has been brought up on these forums many times. What do other users do/use to create exact models using patterns? It seems Autodesk hasn't/doesn't want to look into it.

 

Regards,

Still Waiting aka Ozitag


Yes.. large patterns and the time it takes to compute them have ALWAYS been a problem in Inventor and nothing has been done over the years to address it.

Some are even "forced" to use a texture to represent a pattern because the pattern would just put inventor on its knees begging for it to stop.. 

 

Try adjusting the "compute" options.. (hit the >> button near the bottom of the rectangular pattern dialog box).. and then rerun your fancy chart again..

I seem to remember "optimized" helps some..

 

IF.. I had Solidworks and Inventor to compare I'd love to see a like for like comparison of pattern creation times.. 



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inventor 2023 - Dell Precision 5570

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Maybe buy me a beer through Venmo @mcgyvr1269
Message 8 of 12
Mario428
in reply to: ozitag


@ozitag wrote:

Mario, if your suggestion was true, the time it takes to produce the pattern should be proportional to the number of items being made. This is not the case. I did a simplete test of this.

I made a plate, set a hole in one corner then made a pattern of the hole in the plate then doubled it in each direction . I then measured the time from when I clicked ok to when the pattern was complete and I could see it on the screen. Here are the results.

Pattern 39 x 48 it took 6secs

Pattern 78 x 48 it took 9secs (I was expecting around 12 secs as there is double the number of holes)

Pattern 78 x 96 it took 38secs (If what you were saying held true this should be around 24secs as 4x original number of holes)

Pattern 156 x 96 it took 164secs (What was it doing????)

Clearly the time is exponential, not directly proportional. Why???

Time.png

 

Regards,

Ozitag


Not a programmer so have no idea but it is a fact of life in every solidmodeler I have used.

Message 9 of 12
Mario428
in reply to: mcgyvr


@mcgyvr wrote:

 

IF.. I had Solidworks and Inventor to compare I'd love to see a like for like comparison of pattern creation times.. 


I have used both programs and there is not much difference. Did a large pattern and it killed what was a very fast machine at the time.

Had someone bring me a file that had such a large pattern they could not get it to run on their machine, after some hours had still not rebuilt. I barely got it open on my machine but it was so slow it was unusable.

Message 10 of 12
ozitag
in reply to: mcgyvr

I reran my test and did a new "fancy chart" with the optimized feature selected. It was greatly improved.

Times were:

39x48 - 2.1s

78x48 - 3.7s

78x96 - 8.4s

156x96 - 19.2s

Thanks for this tip. I didn't realise it gave such a difference. What does it do differently?

Time.png

Regards,

Ozitag

IV 2010
Message 11 of 12
mcgyvr
in reply to: ozitag


@ozitag wrote:

I reran my test and did a new "fancy chart" with the optimized feature selected. It was greatly improved.

 What does it do differently?

 

Regards,

Ozitag


No idea what it does differently.. 

A note from the help.

Patterns created with the Optimized or Identical methods calculate faster than the Adjust method. Using Adjust, if it encounters a planar face, the pattern terminates. Results are a feature with a size and shape different from the original.

 Help should really state the following..

Patterns created with the Identical method take friggin forever to compute. Use optimized, if you value your sanity at all. We at Autodesk have chosen to make the default selected method of Identical instead of optimized just to mess with you all.

 



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inventor 2023 - Dell Precision 5570

Did you find this reply helpful ? If so please use the Accept Solution button below.
Maybe buy me a beer through Venmo @mcgyvr1269
Message 12 of 12
ozitag
in reply to: mcgyvr

Thanks for the laugh. That was great. 😄
IV 2010

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