Pattern break and safe STL from single occurence in inventor 2013

[Serge.K]

Hi,

I would like to safe a single element/occurence from a pattern into an STL. (

Like in autocad:  you have to click a single solid to export into STL.  In inventor however, it will export the entire pattern as one big STL.

 screenshot example  in the attachement.... extrusion 2 is not shown, but it is an extruded spline shape.

I found a few topics on this forum about the similar problem,  but it didn't help me or the functions menu didn't exist anymore ( or I did something wrong)

.

Topic 1: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Autodesk-Inventor/Break-Sketch-pattern-without-deleting-elements/m-p/3...

--->  something has been said to  uncheck the Associative checkbox in the edit pattern menu (>> extended menu) .  But there is no such checkbox vissible.

Topic 2:  an example in the assembly + making an occurance individual.  But even when importing into assembly, I couldn't find the option.

Regards,

Serge

[JDMather]

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.. screenshot example  in the attachement....... 

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From your screenshot you have 1 solid (a disjointed solid body).

The results would be exactly the same in AutoCAD.

Try it.  Make your disjointed solids in AutoCAD and Union them into one disjointed solid body and try stlout.

You need to create multiple parts as different parts.

[Serge.K]

thx for the clue ...

I understood about making a disjointed part in autocad and saving it all together in 1 STL.

But how to make different parts from a disjointed part in inventor? 

So how could I make that "solid Bodies (1)"  into "solid bodies(4)"  and then save 4 STL files

Something like explode ...

I tried the split tool in inventor .... but I have the impression it will not split a disjointed body part.

I also tried drawing 2 sketches on 2 planes and extrudes those separately ...  but I still got "1 solid disjointed body"

regards,

Serge

[JDMather · Accepted solution]

If you don't want to remake the parts as individual parts, then what I would do is -

Delete Face with the Lump option to delete the other disjointed solids.

Save Copy as STL.

Undo and repeat for the other bodies.

 This will get each body saved as an individual stl file.

[Serge.K]

I was hoping to avoid the delete and undo technique on the pattern ... but at least I can make what I was wishing for.

thx JDM! 

[JDMather]

Another method woud be to Derive Component as surface bodies into individual part files and then Sculpt and save each as stl.

The advantage is if you make a change - you would only need to resave the derived as stl rather than go back through all that Delete Face?Undo (or roll up EOP) effort.