rectangular pattern over a distance

[stephenson513]

Hi there

Ive tried searching for answers but cant quite come accross the answer Im looking for.

What Im trying to do is create a pattern of holes along a flange on my sheet metal part. The thing is, my sheet metal part stretchs and as it gets longer or shorter, I need it to either add holes or remove holes. 

1.What i have started doing is creating a reference paramter that gives me the length value of the flange. ex - D =1000

2.Then in the rectangular pattern I have set the one drop down to distance.

3.Then the column spacing is set to D-100. ( its set this way because my hole sketch is 50 from the one edge and by minusing 100, the last hole in the pattern stops 50 from the other edge )

4. Now what I cant do is put D/100 in the column count section because its looking for a UL. What I thought would have happened was that it would have been 10 holes evenly spaced over 900 mm

PLease could someone explain how they would do this.

Thanks

[swalton]

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@stephenson513 wrote:

Hi there

Ive tried searching for answers but cant quite come accross the answer Im looking for.

What Im trying to do is create a pattern of holes along a flange on my sheet metal part. The thing is, my sheet metal part stretchs and as it gets longer or shorter, I need it to either add holes or remove holes. 

1.What i have started doing is creating a reference paramter that gives me the length value of the flange. ex - D =1000

2.Then in the rectangular pattern I have set the one drop down to distance.

3.Then the column spacing is set to D-100. ( its set this way because my hole sketch is 50 from the one edge and by minusing 100, the last hole in the pattern stops 50 from the other edge )

4. Now what I cant do is put D/100 in the column count section because its looking for a UL. What I thought would have happened was that it would have been 10 holes evenly spaced over 900 mm

PLease could someone explain how they would do this.

Thanks

---

Try D/100mm

You have to cancel out units to get a unitless number.

[stephenson513]

wow that actually works, didnt know you could do that.

But now how do I get that answer to roundup or down?

Thanks for the help man, Im getting somewhere now with what im trying to accomplish

[JavaLodge]

You can use the functions floor() or ceil() to round an answer up or down (respectively) to the nearest whole number.

Example:

Floor(4.3)=4

Ceil(4.3)=5

[swalton]

Here is a list of math functions availble in iLogic.  I expect that they will work in the parameter window too.

http://help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2014/ENU/?url=http://help.autodesk.com/cloudhelp/2014/ENU/Inve...

[stephenson513]

would I enter Floor(D/100mm) for it to round down?

thank you

[stephenson513]

thank you for the list

[JavaLodge]

Yep, you can do that. All of the functions listed in that list can be used in iLogic or in parameters, unless I am wrong.

[mrattray]

You can also use Round(D/100mm) to round to the nearest whole number.

[cwhetten · Accepted solution]

Just an FYI--the functions listed in the page that @swalton linked to are specifically for iLogic.

>Click here< for a list of functions (scroll to the bottom of the page) that will work in the parameters editor and in dimension edit boxes.

A lot of them are similar, with the only difference being that the first letter of all of the iLogic functions are capitalized.  However, Inventor parameters are case-sensitive, so entering them exactly like the iLogic functions will not work.

For example, the Ciel( ) function only works in a parameter if it is entered as ceil( ).

To calculate a logarithm in iLogic, you type Log10( ).  But, that won't work in the parameters.  Instead, you have to type log( ).

Also, there are some functions in iLogic that don't exist in parameters, and vice versa.

Another good thing about the parameters help page (linked above) is that it shows you what unit types each function expects, and what unit types it returns.  So for example, you can see that the floor( ) function requires that you give it a unitless value, and that it returns a unitless value.

So, if you want to round a parameter called LENGTH down to the nearest millimeter, you can't just type this:

      floor(LENGTH)

You have to type this instead:

      floor(LENGTH / 1 mm) * 1 mm

Cameron Whetten
Inventor 2014

[swalton]

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@cwhetten wrote:

Just an FYI--the functions listed in the page that @swalton linked to are specifically for iLogic.

>Click here< for a list of functions (scroll to the bottom of the page) that will work in the parameters editor and in dimension edit boxes.

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Thanks for finding that link.  I searched "math functions in parameters" and got the ilogic link.  There were no results for parameters.  Help Wiki search strikes again.

[stephenson513]

Thank you so much

and to everyone that had a say