Mirror of Mirror Feature on Solid

[Anonymous]

Hello.

I am working in Inventor 2016.

The mirror command works but is ill-conceived:

I have a feature of holes on one solid. I mirror the feature along a median plane of the solid to get the same holes on the other side as well. I need the same holes on 6 other solids that are attached to each other.

Normally, I would expect, when mirroring into the next solid to only select the the mirror of the holes, not the mirror and the original as it does now.

Yes, I am aware that it is possible to use a rectangular pattern. But no, I do not wish to go down that rabbit hole. For this particular project it would work, that's quite true, but I've had other projects where it was a pain in the you know what.

And no, I cannot attach a part file. Because once I noticed (or rather re-discovered) the faulty function of mirror, I simply deleted all mirrors and am int he process of manually creating sketches for each of the individual solids. Hooray!

The bottom line: I don't want the mirror of a mirror to mirror the original as well, mirror feature needs to give the users the possibility to ONLY select the mirror, not default select the original as well.

Please note, I am working in a part file, not in an assembly.

Thank you for your help.

[JDMather]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

.... I simply deleted all mirrors and am int he process of manually creating sketches for each of the individual solids. Hooray!

Thank you for your help.

---

Can you attach this new file when completed to see if others can come up with more efficient techniques (including techniques using Mirror)?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! I believe the ability you are asking, mirroring features across multiple solids, has been added in 2017. Please upgrade to 2017.4 or later.

Many thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hello JD,

thank you for your reply.

I cannot attach the file, I'm afraid. As soon as I noticed that the mirror command would not do what I needed it to do, I simply deleted the mirrors and I did it all manually. As in draw 7 sketches, copy paste my one sketch into all seven and then use the hole command to make holes where I needed them to be. It definitely took a lot less time than trying to divine why it's not working.

If I have time tomorrow or monday, I'll replicate the issue in a new file and post it.

Still, what I mean is this:

A is my feature
|1 is my first mirror plane
A' is the mirror of A across |
|2 is my second mirror plane
A'' should be the mirror of A' across |2

So:

A |1 A' - works fine
but when I try this:
A' |2
I get A A' as a result instead of A''.

In essence the mirror command performed on A fuses A with A' and prevents me from getting A'' as a mirror of A' giving me instead A A'.

[JDMather]

If you go back and read my response you should see that I requested your new file. That is, the file that you did after your mirror attempt did not work out.

[Anonymous]

Hi Johnson,

thank you for your reply.

Unfortunately the school I am at uses Inventor 2016. And while up to now I have not needed to send any of my files to the teachers for whatever reason, if I switch over to 2017 and I suddenly need to send them a file, then they will be unable to open that file in 2016.

So upgrading, while possible, is not an option for the time being.

Which reminds me, have you had a chance to look at the folder I e-mailed you about a month ago? 🙂

I am asking because I think I might have the same issue again with my new project. Since linking parameters between files is a lengthy process, I am still working in a part file with many solids, which I will later transform into separate parts and then assemble them into an assembly.

But at the very beginning of the file, I began having serious issues. I made two solid bodies, then made them parts. And then, when I needed to cut a shape into one and add the same shape to the other, Inventor kept moaning that the loop was not closed. Which was really annoying since I had used a rectangle made by the rectangle command, so one would assume that the loop IS closed. Using the close loop command didn't work either, it kept throwing up an overconstrained sketch error message in my face. So I just deleted the file and started anew, without making any of the solids into parts. I'll do that last in the project. Still... about 50% of the extrudes I make are displaying the red + to indicate that there is something wrong with the sketch, I can still extrude but I'm wondering where it will go wrong. Since I am working on a shelf, all shapes I create are based on rectangles, so I cannot even being to fathom why Inventor would leave open loops on a sketch that only contains a lonely and fully constrained rectangle. I am beginning to suspect that the project file is being somehow corrupted.

On the less bright side, the issues with the assembly in my previous project turned my A into a meager C so yes, I'm less than happy about the whole thing. 😞

[Anonymous]

Hi again, JD

thank you for the reply.

Yup my bad, I was in a hurry yesterday when I read your reply and I didn't read it again this morning.

I have attached the new file.

The mirror attempt was made on solid B1, right edge. I mirrored the holes onto B2 left and then attempted to mirror the holes from B2 left side to B2 right side but instead ended up with holes in B3 as well. Which would have been ok except B8 only needs holes on the left side.

The reason I have deleted the mirrors and went for making the holes individually is because I will need to turn each body in the file into a part file (so I can make individual dwg files for them as well as assemble them into a nice assembly with dowels and so on) and I haven't got the foggies how a mirror that is split between two solids will behave.

With my last project I have already established that the mirror tool is very close to useless so I preferred not to take any chances.

[WHolzwarth]

I didn't look at each feature in your browser tree, but this seems horribly long.

 You know, that you can pattern or mirror existing solids as new bodies? After that you can save them as different components.

[Anonymous]

Hi Wh,

thank you for your reply.

Yes, you are correct, my browser tree is long indeed. Compared to some of my previous projects it is quite short at the moment. It will not stay so as what you have seen is about 10% of the project.

My post was however about the functionality of the mirror function and not about the length of my browser tree. If your reply referred to my reply to Johnson (where I pointed out that for some reason Inventor seems to have issues closing loops of rectangles made with the rectangle tool), then I do not understand how the length of a browser tree should impact the creation of a very basic extrusion of a rectangular shape.

As to patterning or mirroring solids as new bodies, how would that reduce the length of my browser tree? I mean the mirror and patterns will also be displayed in my browser window. Yes, the pattern will list the separate occurences within the pattern feature but that makes no difference really. Furthermore, each of the solids within the part file will become separate part files because I need drawings for each one separately. I have previously experimented with patterns and the results were frustrating because I was not able to extract one single occurence from the pattern to make a single solid part file that would allow me to have only one part displayed in my dwg file.

As for mirror, I've recently had some very nasty issues with mirrors (in assembly I have had mirrors mirroring a sub-assembly upside down across the mirror plane). Additionally, when mirroring a mirror, the feature doesn't only mirror the mirror but the original of the mirror as well - I haven't found a way to change that.

Despite my long-wound explanations, I would be grateful if you could explain to me how to extract an occurence from a pattern and turn it into a part file so that I can place only one occurence in my dwg file.

(As a btw, from my file, solids B1 to B8 will all be different, because each will contain a different number of holes with different positions. I did mention that the shelf I am building does not contain any symmetrical features.)

Thank you for your help.