Inside Out Constrainting

[untrustedone]

I had a more complex model, so I created this a learning/teaching model. I have probably violated lots of rules, best practices and such, but here it is anyways. 

I have a base sketch, Snowman in the Shallow component. In the end, this will get routed out wood on a cnc router. The plan was/is to have the one piece and then two parts are generated. Current thinking is to use 3/8 thick wood. So, the lower set of parts are not cut through, but left as a base to be shown on. The upper parts are through routed. The upper parts will cut off into a separate piece and glued to the lower piece, so think of it being cut to a 1/3 and 2/3 parts. So, the outer size of the wood is really defined by the outside snowmen and the lower edge is defined by the location of the candy cane outer piece. 

So, being a glutton for punishment and finding that the cad packages I have used to this point suck at manipulating ellipses, I still like ellipses, as the are basic to my design.

I created then base snowman on the centerline, then because I can't figure out how to make a pattern on a path, i made it a body and created the pattern along the ellipse. Since it is a pattern, the bodies all part of the component. Probably because I selected body to copy. 

Then, I copied that component to another component, because they will lay on top of each other. Then I created the candy cane pieces. Somehow, previously I was able to get them to line up with the Shallow Snowmen, but this time not so much. 

Now we get to the Money Part. Here the outside dimensions are based on the placement of the internal components. Left right is straight forward, but vertically, i have some over constrainment going on. I think that the dimensions from shallow to deep are what are blocking me, <feature enhancement>it would be nice to highlight the conflicting constraint</feature enhancement>. (1.8876 and 0.7847) I would like to make these driving dimensions. 

The next obvious question is was this the right path? Is there a way to do a sketch on a path? 

The next non-obvious question for me is how do I make the deep objects thicker, so that they go through the Money Part? 

Also, there are a lot of copying of names that does no make sense to me. A copied component is different from a made from scratch component, and it is confusing to me.

[davebYYPCU]

I would like to say I know what you mean, but.

Simple part first, there is no sketch pattern on a Path in Fusion.

Making body patterns is better - in the first place.

You seem to be past that anyway.

I think you want to cut those bodies at either 2 or 3 different depths as pockets.  Right?

Are you saying you want the components to move with the two blocking dimensions?

Those two dimensions are derived, from other locked articles, and are a visual aid to tell you what the spacings are.

Might help...

[etfrench]

Using a circular pattern instead of the pattern on an ellipse would result in two of the snowmen changing position by .067".  On a 14"x11" (approximately), this would be hard to detect.  Create a three point circle using the center of the snowmen heads as input to see the difference.

The candy canes don't line up with the snowmen because you used a different sized ellipse as the path.  If you want them aligned you can either use the same size ellipse (and the pattern on path parameters) as the snowmen or you can just create the snowmen and the candy canes in the same pattern on path. 

To make the deeper snowmen deeper, just extrude them by selecting the bottom of each one.

[untrustedone]

SO work flow, do the money part first, leave fully unconstrained, then , the do the internal bits? Because after extruding the money part, only the circles I referenced did not become solid. 

When I go to move the Deep parts bottom, the shallow parts move also, not what I wanted.

It seems to be going to be very complicated to undo the other constraints and then make the driven dimensions the the drivers. Can a body be created without a fully constrained sketch? 

[untrustedone]

It just must be my OCD, but faking it is wrong. I use a CAD system to do stuff automagically that is too difficult (for me, the programmers behind the scenes are wizards) to do on paper. GIGO. If I wanted a full ellipse of Snowmen, that should be possible to make.

[etfrench]

Is this what you're trying to do?

Constraints allow changes to be made parametrically without distorting the geometry.  They are not necessary for extruding parts.

[untrustedone]

Ta Da. yes. and that move command (of the deep) is editable so if I need to change the router bit, and then change the g-code, that is not a big deal?

[etfrench]

I expect you'll have trouble actually machining this as drawn.   The heads and bodies of the deep snowmen are too close together to mill.  Separating them by a little more than the diameter of your router bit will allow you to make each one of them accurately.  You'll also need to fillet the sharp corners in the lower body sections. The shallow pockets won't be a problem milling.  The candy cane pockets will also be a problem because they're drawn with square corners.  You can either use a hand chisel to make them square or fillet the corners of the candy canes. (Another option would be to fill the pockets with crushed red and white stones set in epoxy.)

[untrustedone]

Yeah, this is just example. Real model has that covered.

[davebYYPCU]

You maybe confused about bodies and components, 

I wasn't sure of the problem, but Ed's movie fixed that, 

This is the way I do it, one article, one component.  

Make the article by drawing features and bodies etc, make one and copy the rest.

No problems working inside out, as the title says, all your geometry copy / pasted to a new file.

So you have one plate, with 15 pockets, but only two pocket shapes.  Extrapolated to 3 patterns.

Only problem with your geometry was the head being tangent to the torso, caused the patterns to complain / fail, so made an overlap as a compromise.

File attached, step up the timeline and see if in makes sense to you....

(Only have to dimension the plate sketch to be full parametric.)

Depth of cut on a router, change the depth of the extrude.

Might help.....