Best practices for hole pattern for a rectangular flange

[Anonymous]

Howdy!

Just curious what everyone's best practice is for when they do a hole pattern on a rectangular flange.

There's a few methods I can think of, but I'm not happy with any of them.
A. Create a hole, then use a feature pattern for LxW, but suppress all the holes that aren't in the perimeter
B. Create a hole, then pattern the feature along a "curve".
C. Create a linear pattern of the hole twice, then mirror across the diagonal.

The pros/cons I have with each approach:
A. Not scalable if the flange shape changes. Time consuming to manually pick all internal holes. Excellent for placing fasteners on to the pattern. Allows for different x/y spacing.
B. Doesn't allow for different x/y spacing. Easy to place. Difficult to automate so that you have a hole in every corner, and if you don't do this the pattern is just silly. Excellent for placing fasteners on the pattern.
C. Simple to create the features. Annoying as hell when you start placing fasteners!!!

So, what's everyone's best practice? I'd really love to discover something new here... 🙂
Cheers!
-KB

[dan_inv09]

What exactly do you mean by "Not scalable?"

If you do the long way first, with three the short way you can shift select quickly. For four the short way, shift select and ctrl "un"select the two in the middle.
Maybe they could think about making a perimeter hole pattern feature, just a little check box to automatically suppress the ones in the middle so you don't have to manually re-suppress if the quantities change.

[Anonymous]

I mean that if the size of the flange changes, and you have the qty of holes calculated on the fly to match the new flange sizes, then you have to go and manually deselect all the new holes that would be added if the flange grew, or reselect old holes if the flange shrinks.

Any time you have these manual steps in a parametric "intelligent" model, it's not scalable. One person will know to suppress the holes, one will not.

Yes, a "perimeter" hole pattern feature would be fantastic, completely real-world, and therefore very unlikely to be added... 😉

Anyone seen any sort of user-created macro/add-in command to create a "perimeter pattern"? Seems like something that could be automated.

[dan_inv09]

I don't know if you could get the macro to run automatically anyway.

Are these iParts? I don't have time to look, do pattern occurrences show up on the suppression tab?
What about a different iPart (or template, or whatever you are trying to set up) for each quantity? (i.e. 3x5 flange.ipt, 5x8 flange.ipt, etc.) It might take a little foresight, or effort to switch later, but at least it should be more obvious than remembering to manually change the suppression.

[Anonymous]

No, not iParts. Nice idea, but these are simply flange connections on a large hopper. The hopper dimension changes depending on the size of the vessel above it. It's all skeleton-based and things resize perfectly, it's just that rectangular patterns are a pain!

I should just make everything have round flanges... 😕

[Anonymous]

I don't think a perimeter pattern macro would help place the fasteners because it wouldn't be a true pattern.

I think it is possible to create a rectangular pattern to create the holes and then used aditional formulas to suppress occurances. I vaguely remember seeing a post on this years ago. I don't think it was very elegant, and might have required a macro to update the suppression formulas for to any added occurances.

I think the most basic approach would be 2 X and 2 Y patterns. The math for them already exists.

Without knowing the total number of x and y holes and how scalable it would need to be, ie the matrix sizes, it is tough to come up with other soutions.

iParts could be a VERY good choice. Base parts could also work if only the hole spacing changed for certain sizes, and the matrix was small for the hole count variations.

Do they need to be infinitely variable? Do they need to be created on the fly and often changed during the design? Or is there a fixed set of sizes and patterns.

Pete

[Anonymous]

I might forgo the Pattern function, use a sketch
with my hole centers and drive the sketch size from some other parameters, such
as 75% of the flange width and the distance from the end of the flange 15% of
flange width. Just a thought.

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style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">

<KBaker> wrote in message
href="news:6115402@discussion.autodesk.com">news:6115402@discussion.autodesk.com...

No,
not iParts. Nice idea, but these are simply flange connections on a large
hopper. The hopper dimension changes depending on the size of the vessel above
it. It's all skeleton-based and things resize perfectly, it's just that
rectangular patterns are a pain! I should just make everything have round
flanges... 😕

[Anonymous]

Version??

href="http://teknigroup.com/support/Inventor/Howto.html">http://teknigroup.com/support/Inventor/How...

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Dennis Jeffrey, Autodesk Inventor Certified
Expert
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[Anonymous]

You run in to the exact same problems when doing it this way, plus you cannot place a fastener and have it match the hole pattern.

Doing a single hole feature from multiple hole points on a sketch rarely is an advantageous solution.

[Anonymous]

This problem exhibits itself in any version.

I am running AIP2k9 64bit build 538. New feature available?

[dan_inv09]

Would you use a sketch pattern for hole quantities?

It seems like the ultimate goal is a skeletal model driving an assembly and any operator will make a copy and change a couple of numbers ("this hopper is 5 feet longer, and the tank is 2 feet shorter") and everything updates automatically, update the titleblocks and tweak the drawings a little for clarity and the whole job is done.

[Anonymous]

No, I do not use a sketch pattern for hole quantities. I'll use the sketch to draw the rectangular path in this example, and to determine the hole-to-hole spacing. I'll do this without the use of a pattern. I use a feature pattern using the values from the sketch for spacing/distance, etc. QTY is dist/spacing+1.

You're completely correct about the ultimate goal of the skeletal model. This is why it's best to avoid any sort of manual suppression of individual hole instances.

[Anonymous]

It would seem that at some point, you would have
either a over-rated bolted connection for a small hopper, or a under-rated
bolted connection for a large hopper. Either the number of holes would require
increasing, or the size of hole/fastner.

--
IV2009-Pro Sp1
Dell 670 dual Xeon - 3.2
3gb memory,
SCSI320-15k rpm
XP-Pro, sp3
Quadro FX3400: Driver: 181.20
Direct3D
SpacePilot Rel V: 3.6.10 Dvr V: 6.6.4 Firmware 3.12
AVG 8.0

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">

<dan_inv09> wrote in message
href="news:6115547@discussion.autodesk.com">news:6115547@discussion.autodesk.com...

Would
you use a sketch pattern for hole quantities? It seems like the ultimate goal
is a skeletal model driving an assembly and any operator will make a copy and
change a couple of numbers ("this hopper is 5 feet longer, and the tank is 2
feet shorter") and everything updates automatically, update the titleblocks
and tweak the drawings a little for clarity and the whole job is
done.

[Anonymous]

You can easily get the qty of holes to increase relative to flange size.

Bolt size is another issue altogether! Don't get me started on this... 😉

[Anonymous]

That's not why I asked.... if anyone was creating an example
it would be nice to know in the Original poster could open it....

--
Dennis Jeffrey, Autodesk Inventor Certified
Expert
Autodesk Manufacturing Implementation Certified
Expert.
Instructor/Author/Sr. App Engr.
AIP 2008 SP2, AIP 2009-SP1
PcCillin AV
HP zv5000  AMD64 2GB - Geforce Go 440, Driver: .8185
XP
Pro SP3, Windows XP Silver Theme

href="http://teknigroup.com">http://teknigroup.com

[Anonymous]

Do you also need to know my windows theme?? 😛

[dan_inv09]

Yes, the hole quantity is the whole problem.

[Anonymous]

Holy qty is the (w)hole problem? With what?

I missed something. I'm not having any troubles with hole quantity. All three of my proposed workflows work for proper hole quantities.

[Anonymous]

No but you need to know that disrespecting people on the
newsgroup will mean that you will not get the solution I was
planning.

--
Dennis Jeffrey, Autodesk Inventor Certified
Expert
Autodesk Manufacturing Implementation Certified
Expert.
Instructor/Author/Sr. App Engr.
AIP 2008 SP2, AIP 2009-SP1
PcCillin AV
HP zv5000  AMD64 2GB - Geforce Go 440, Driver: .8185
XP
Pro SP3, Windows XP Silver Theme

href="http://teknigroup.com">http://teknigroup.com

[Anonymous]

Yikes! Lighten up!

In some circles responding to a post with "Version??" is equal to shouting.
Posting to a silly FAQ is even more disrespectful when I ask a well-formed question and had fully searched for solutions.

So, lighten up and quiet down about disrespect. Aside from your side-thread there's been some great discussion happening in this thread. You're not the newsgroup police despite how much time and effort you contribute.

Happy Friday!