Creating a frame

[Anonymous]

This is likely to be another 'how many ways can we skin this cat' type of thing. I'm making a small frame that will have another piece inserted into it during the print process. Simplified, it looks like this:

And a closeup of the inset part:

When I'm making this, I break it up into three "layers", the bottom part, a center (which is smaller dor the inset) and then the top, like this:

The bottom and top get an inner chamfer and all three together get the outside rounded with a fillet. For the most part, this works. Especially when the bottom layer has other stuff, like sometimes instead of it being a six sided frame, I will fill the hole with some sort of design, then the center one and the top one which are just a six sided frame.

However, the one thing that annoys me is if I forget to do something on that bottom layer, or if I need to change it a bit, many times it affects the next two layers to the point where I need to completely delete them and redraw. So my question is, is there a better way to do this? Or what I'm doing the right way to go about it, keeping in mind that the bottom layer can be different in the middle, but the outline is the same as the rest.

Edited to add ipt file ...

[Anonymous]

See my post further back in the thread. After you sent me your file, that's when I tried to make changes to Sketch1 and add something to the frame. I added a picture of what happens.

[CCarreiras]

Yes, i saw it, but.... since that is wrong, what do you trying to achieve instead what's in the image?

Do you need a little cylinder in each corner? centered with what? That cylinder always exist for every case?

[Anonymous]

Ok, let's backtrack for a bit. Go back to the file you sent me, which was just the hexagon. Now, assume I forgot that I needed to add something to the frame, like the loop, so it looks like this in the end:

So when I'm looking at your file, I go to edit Sketch1 to add that little loop at the top. Once that's done and I exit the sketch, that's when I get the extrusion the way it looks in my earlier post. I don't know how to fix that other than to delete the extrusion and redo it with the correct profile. But once I do that, Sketch2 now loses it's dependencies ...

[CCarreiras]

Ok, i get it regarding the loop.

But think... why do you have to do the loop in the first sketch??!! you can do it in the end!!! Therefore you don't have to mess with sketch 1

First, construct the body (sides, rip)

second aesthetics (filets, chamfers)

Then the loop (a new sketch, a new feature... maybe a revolve one)

Note: the second and third step can be changed... first fillets/chamfer, then the loop, or the opposite, depends how you want the part.

Tell me more about the loop, size, Thick...

Is in every corner or in only one.

Is always in the corner, or can be in other places?

Now i have to sleep. I left a new model, study it.

https://screencast.autodesk.com/Embed/Timeline/d901e25d-c662-4331-8e27-d5db83043bb1

Now i use a circular array to repeat the number or sides you need.

Each side element is controled by the heigh, and the width is drived by the "Height" Vs "sides/360". Check sketch 1

If you open the parameters table, you will notice that we can apply functions using model'sparameters plus user's parameters.

For example, the number of sides is a user parameter. I create it manually in the table to use it in a function to have the correct width of each element, them i repeated the element  "side" times around the center axis. Hope you get it.

Next we will solve the loop issue, just give more info about that. Gonna sleep now. see ya in a few hours.