Duplicate including cutting another body

[davemurrayrust]

I've got a design where I want to make a sheet material template to hold many copies of smaller parts.

Each smaller part is defined in a separate file, and includes bodies for a set of cutouts that make the right holes in the sheet material to hold screws etc. The idea is I can bring them into one design, and cut the right holes in the sheet material

Here's a part with the cutouts as red bodies:

I can then use Combine - Cut on the red bodies to create the right holes:

I'm using 'Duplicate With Joints' to position multiple copies around - works great for positioning, but it looks like I have to individually select the cutouts on each individual instance to cut out the holes. Is there any way to create several instances, and have their cutout bodies used in the Combine -> Cut? I know it's possible to set it up so the cutouts can be selected all at once, and then do a cut with that selection, but it feels a bit error prone and fiddly.

I've tried a couple of different versions, but I always get the duplicates:

But not the matching cuts:

Thanks!

[Phil.E]

Hello, thanks for posting.

I'm an advocate of this type of design method, and I'm glad you asked the question.

Briefly, no it doesn't work this way, currently. Copy with joints copies components as you know, but the difference is components don't make combine/cut operations simply by being there. 

Move/Copy doesn't copy bodies and faces at the same time, even so face copy isn't supported.

Patterning would work, if they formed a pattern but you cannot pattern features and components together.

There are customers who solve issues like this by creating an addin/script. Perhaps that's a direction you could take.

The scripts and add-ins tools are on the Utility tab.

[davemurrayrust]

Thanks! A shame it's not currently easy. I might have a look into scripting 🙂