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Sheet metal puzzle ifeature

5 REPLIES 5
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Message 1 of 6
avroekel
1192 Views, 5 Replies

Sheet metal puzzle ifeature

In our company we use the sheet metal feature of Inventor quite often. Lots of our sheet metal products are designed like puzzles for easy positioning. We use simple rectangle male-female shapes. See attachment for some printscreens of a sheet metal assembly.

 

Until now we build the features by hand every time. Today I started building an iFeature for it, but it doesn't seem as easy as I thought. I made an iFeature for one single puzzle hole: a rectangle with four circles on the corners(for the laser cutting machine). This far it works. I can change length, width, and circle radius. But when I have a part with six exactly similar holes, I have to copy the iFeature six times, and place it in position every time(position of holes can be pretty random on a surface). 

 

My question is: is it possible to make one iFeature for multiple holes? 

These parameters must be adjustable:

- number of holes

- position and orientation of hole

- dimensions of hole

 

Thanks,

 

Anne van Roekel

5 REPLIES 5
Message 2 of 6
-niels-
in reply to: avroekel

Welkom op het forum!

I'm not sure if you can make an ifeature with multiple holes, if it is then i'd think you'd lose control over individual orientation.

But, since you're working with sheetmetal, why not make a punch feature.
That way you'd only have to place centerpoints where you want to place the hole and it would automatically put the hole at every centerpoint.

Niels van der Veer
Inventor professional user & 3DS Max enthusiast
Vault professional user/manager
The Netherlands

Message 3 of 6
mcgyvr
in reply to: -niels-

Sure you can have multiple holes.. BUT Inventor (for some stupid reason) only allows 1 sketch "center point"..

I do "cluster punches" all the time..

 

The trick is to only use the "center point" for your initial placement point then turn it off (see the format section) when in an active sketch.. Unhighlight center point)

 

 

 



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Inventor 2023 - Dell Precision 5570

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Message 4 of 6
avroekel
in reply to: -niels-

Thanks Niels! Leuk om hier een Nederlander te ontmoeten..
Message 5 of 6
avroekel
in reply to: mcgyvr

I don't really understand the last part. Why are you turning off the center point?
Message 6 of 6
mcgyvr
in reply to: avroekel


@avroekel wrote:
I don't really understand the last part. Why are you turning off the center point?

Inventor will throw an error during punch tool creation if you have more than 1 center point. It expects only 1 center point to be used as the placement point for the punch feature. So if you have used more than 1 (like if you created multiple holes) it will error out. But you can use 1 center point then turn it off and use the regular hole point (or whatever its called) for all your holes.. Then there should be no error



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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

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