Extruding patterned or mirrored sketch objects

[Anonymous]

Hi.  I have been having issues trying to extrude patterened sketch objects.  Specifically, in trying to create a pattern of precisely placed holes in a material, I started with the sketch from which I was extruding the body I would be placing the holes in.  I created one circle in the sketch, then used rectangular pattern to more circles precisely where I wanted them to form holes.  I find that working in the sketch environment is easiest for precisely measuring things which is why I wanted to pattern in the sketch environment and not the model environment.  

However, when I tried to extrude the pattern of circles to form holes, I could only select the first circle that I used to create the pattern.

In doing some searching, I found posts relating to Inventor that said, essentially, creat the first hole from the sketch and then pattern it as a feature once created.  However, this is problematic for several reasons:

1.  I have to then tranlate my measurements from the sketch environment into the model environment, and it's a lot harder to precisely measure bodies (relative to one another) than sketch objects.

2.  It's harder to go and edit things in the model environment than in the sketch environment.

3.  It's an additional workflow step, and I can't see any logical reason why patterned and mirrored objects can't be extruded.  

Am I doing somethign wrong in the sketch environment - i.e. I SHOULD be able to extrude patterned/mirrored objects but am doing some wrong?

If this can't be done, why not?

If my only option is to pattern one hole as a feature, can you point me to some worflows for how to precisely objects in the model environment?  It's so much easier in the sketch environment...

Thanks!

[etfrench]

Can you make a screencast to show the problem?  If you create a sketch on the face of the 3d model, you can select multiple circles (or points) to create holes using either the Hole or the Extrude tool.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the quick reply!

So, the design file has a hole bunch of sketches in it and I’m not sure whether it would actually helpful to just put the file here…

Here are some screenshots:

The hole in the top left is the one I created with the circle command, and the 3 others were created using the rectangular pattern tool in sketch mode:



As you may be able to see, the other circles look a bit greyed out compared to the original (top left).

When I try and extrude, the only circle that can be selected (or in this case de-selected, because I want to extrude them as holes), is the top left one.



In my first responding to your request for posting a file, I just create a new file and recreated this sketch and in that new design file I COULD extrude the patterned holes (?!), so I don’t know what is at issue here. In the file where I am having problems, I am re-editing a sketch back in the timeline to add the holes - not sure if that has anything to do with it?

So are there specific circumstances when you cannot extrude patterned/mirrored objects (because I was having the same issue in another design file using mirrored objects)?

Thanks!

[etfrench]

None of your files were attached.  The most likely reason for the failure is the sketch with the circles is not the topmost sketch.  Try turning the visibility off on all sketches except the one with the pattern and see if you can now extrude them.

[Anonymous]

Best regards!! Here I leave an example of how I would, of course it is possible to do the extrude of objects created in the sketch by Patterns and Mirrors.

[SaeedHamza]

Hi,

There must something wrong, it might be how you do it, that's why making a screencast will be the best way to find out what is going on exactly

Regards

Saeed

[Anonymous]

Thanks to everyone for the responses. 

Saeed - as you suggested I am including a screencast here.  

Anuar - thank you for your screencast.  That's exactly what I am trying to do but for some reason in this design I can only select the original shape that the pattern is made from.

etfrench - I did check that the other sketches in the stack had their visibility off.

Dave

[SaeedHamza]

It's really strange this problem you're having, because this works just fine with me, that's why if you can provide the file, it would be better to understand exactly what s going on

Watch this for better understanding, you will see in this screencast that this works just fine with me

Regards

Saeed

[Anonymous]

 if you can provide the file would be fine to see whats happening.