topic Re: How to cut a frame member to a plane? in Inventor Forum

How to cut a frame member to a plane?

TomHia — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 19:02:24 GMT

Hi again,

I've got a question about frame member cutting with a simple example posted below.

What I want to have is a frame member cut not to solid geometry but to a plane and for it to be robust - updating its length as it should when the skeleton line length changes. One would think - eaaaasy! But no...

I want the frame member to have the minimum length as specified in the skeleton and placed accordingly (along the sketch line and with the minimum length covering the line, not offset from it as it happens in the video*).

Things work great with the "start plane" side. But nothing seems to work for the "end plane" side of the member.

*In case someone was wondering why I ground the cut plane on "start side" - just so that Inventor doesn't throw an error/warning inside the frame member. Doesn't hurt, doesn't help much but it's clean and works.

As always - all sorts of help kindly appreciated!

Re: How to cut a frame member to a plane?

johnsonshiue — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 21:00:11 GMT

Hi! This is doable but a bit tricky. The issue here is that the 45-degree workplane is based on the frame faces. When Frame Gen recreate the frame member, the workplane will move along. To fix it, open the frame member file -> right-click on the workplane -> check Ground. Then the Trim/Extend will work correctly.

Many thanks!

Re: How to cut a frame member to a plane?

chris — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 21:42:46 GMT

This is suuuppppper easy if you are not using Frame Generator, and you don't even need the planes. I have all this built into my frame member templates.

Re: How to cut a frame member to a plane?

TomHia — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 14:58:51 GMT

Hi,

@johnsonshiue Thanks for the tip but as I have shown in the video I already know about it. And it only works for the "Start" plane side. It fails for the "End" plane side. You're not considering the adaptivity - I need it to adapt correctly when I change the sketch line driving the frame member's geometry. Grounding both planes only works when you've got the dimension set in stone, but as soon as you change the dimension it all breaks.

I am convinced that if it doesn't work OOTB (or at all, idk) then it should be considered a technical limitation or a bug (imho a bug) and fixed. This should be a core option. Cause an only other robust approach I can imagine is to create a reference geometry to which it could Miter or Trim but it's cumbersome and a workaround at best.

@chris Do you mind sharing an example?

Re: How to cut a frame member to a plane?

jeffsteiger6735 — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 19:41:57 GMT

What I find that seems to work is to select the trim plane from the skeleton file inside the assembly.