topic Re: Calculate the size of extrusions within a part in Inventor Programming Forum

Calculate the size of extrusions within a part

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 12:37:21 GMT

Hello all, this is my first post so hopefully I have posted this in the right place. I have searched the forum but to no avail.

Is there any way of calculating the accumulated size (not all surface areas, just the Width x Height) of all extrusions within a part via iLogic/VBA?

Example1:This simple part contains two extrusions, adding up to a total of 16000mm². But there can be many more extrusions within a part on some occasions, or no extrusions at all on other occasions. (Or also just the square part itself. Which then of course would result in a value of 0mm²)

Example2(with a few more extrusions):

My company are producing foam inserts on a CNC router, and I am hoping to use these numbers to estimate the milling time of multiple parts within an assembly.

All parts are rectangular before milling, but contain different shapes and sizes of extrusions within.

Manually it is of course no problem to find these values with a calculator and a pen, but we are hoping to having it done automatically and export the value from the BOM and into our ERP-system.

Could this be done with iLogic or VBA?

Regards

Aff

Re: Calculate the size of extrusions within a part

torbjorn_heglum2 — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 13:33:28 GMT

When you have created the machined part, create a new body equal to the block before machining.

Then you can subtract the machined body, and the remaining will be the machined (removed) volume.

Torbjørn

Re: Calculate the size of extrusions within a part

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 14:23:10 GMT

Hi and thank you for your reply.

These foam inserts are drawn in the final thickness, and then split up into sheets of 50mm before milling.

So I'm hoping for a solution whereas we do not need to go into each sheet and performe a manual prosedure to get the values needed for the time calculation.

Regards

Aff

Re: Calculate the size of extrusions within a part

JDMather — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 14:51:24 GMT

Your equation example is calculation of an area (mm^2), but your problem description sounds like you need calculation of a volume (mm^3) removed. I guess it doesn't matter if you machine time is not depth-of-cut dependent.

I would use a Derived Component.

Re: Calculate the size of extrusions within a part

Cadmanto — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 14:50:28 GMT

Welcome to the forum.

This should be really posted in the Inventor customization forum.

I will contact the forum admin to move this over.

Windows 10 x64 -16GB Ram
Intel i7-6700 @ 3.41ghz
nVidia GTS 250 - 1 GB
Inventor Pro 2018

Re: Calculate the size of extrusions within a part

mcgyvr — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 15:13:37 GMT

A quick manual method is to simply create a new sketch on that face and then use "region properties" to select the face and get the total area..

Then subtract that from the total area of the stock..

Re: Calculate the size of extrusions within a part

johnsonshiue — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 15:44:00 GMT

Hi! There should be an API/iLogic rule solution. If you want to do it manually, you can use Region Properties. Create a sketch on the face with the cutouts. Project the face/edges. Go to Tools -> Measure -> Region Properties -> select a profile. You will see a lot of properties for the selected profiles.

Many thanks!

Re: Calculate the size of extrusions within a part

rayessle — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 14:22:26 GMT

In the part attached (inventor 2018) there are two ilogic rules. The first one (area) will place the area of all regions in a sketch called "area" into a custom iproperty. The sketch was made by projecting the edges of the extruded cuts. The second rule called "pick" lets you pick a face then puts the area into another iproperty. You should be able to use the first rule as a starting point to get what you need. You could then trigger this rule to run on a parameter change or save to update the values automatically as required.