Creating inner compartment walls (beginner)

[Anonymous]

Hi. I have a question about the best way to approach something.  This is very simple but there are a number of ways I can go about doing this, and probably some ways I don't even know about yet as I'm still learning.

Say I have a box, hollowed out with the Shell feature and given a wall thickness of 2mm.  Now let's say I want to add some inner compartments and build up walls with a thickness of 1mm.

Here is an example image of a similar concept for reference:

Important to note that my entire model is designed from user parameters and I want to be able to change these values in the future so they can be used to automatically reconstruct the model with different properties.  For example, I define that I want 3 compartments along the X axis and 4 compartments along the Z axis, and then I would use these values in the Pattern feature for example to create other features.  At some point I might want to change those to 5 along X and 4 along Z, or I might want to change the inner wall thickness parameter.  I want nothing "permanent", or hard-coded so to speak

What is the best way to define these inner walls?  I could create solids and do boolean cuts, I could draw out a sketch of one section and pattern it, etc.

I have a secondary question that might relate to this.  I remembered about the official "Thicken" video (here) .. in this video, they seem to have some kind of body that has zero thickness.  How is a body of zero thickness like that created?  How this relates to my previous question is.. I was wondering if it would be possible to do a simple sketch of zero-thickness lines for walls, and then use the thicken feature to build out the thickness.  Hopefully that makes sense.

[davebYYPCU]

You are on the right track with parametric body patterns.

There is also the Rib  and Web Tools,  in the modelling area, to investigate.

Zero thickness bodies are made in the Patch / Surfacing area.

So many ways to skin your cat.

[Anonymous]

Oh wow, the web tool looks perfect.  Thanks! 

[crunch9KHEA]

Did you ever figure out how to do this? I have a similar idea for a drawer insert. I started off trying to do a pattern with sketch lines then using the web tool which could have worked but I never found a way to have the web tool to correctly update the number of inserts if I changed a parameter. Sometimes it would seem to work but the moment I started working on something else (like adding the perpendicular lines) it would break.

I'm really just wondering if it's possible to use a Rectangular Pattern on a sketch line which is then used with a Web command to create inner walls on an object. And in this scenario, I also want the number of lines created with the Rectangular Pattern to be defined by a parameter which I can update and have the changes propagate.

[jhackney1972]

Attached is a Partition Box that is Parametrically driven.  It is not perfect as you can throw some values at it that throw it off but it may give you an idea how to handle the Web command in yours.  Hope it helps.

[crunch9KHEA]

Ah, thanks, that did help. I was hoping the pattern tool could be used and have it automatically adjust the original body/feature position based on the spacing inputs. But manually adding in the logic to update the original starting position in the sketch does also work.