Using Direct Edit to scale dynamic Geometry Text extrusion

[Anonymous]

I am trying to emboss a solid with text. The solid's base shape is a cylinder and so I need to use text bent along a circle - geometry text feature. The part I am working on is an iPart that has varying diameters for the base solid, and with increasing diameter, the text size needs to be scaled proportionally as well. Also, the text changes based on an user parameter as well - the first character varies.

Since it apparently is impossible to use an user parameter for the font size in the text editing dialog directly, I was searching for alternate solutions and on these forums found the suggestion to not use the emboss feature, but instead extrude the geometry text into a new solid, then using direct edit to scale the solid, then use combine to cut the text solid from the base solid.

This did seem to work well - until I started adding new iPart configurations with new values for the first character. Inventor started spitting out an error message every time I tried updating the part: "Dependent modeling failed. Try editing or deleting feature."

This message was incredibly useless as there was no real hint as to what exactly caused the error. I have no idea what exactly I did, but after a lot of clicking around I got Inventor to display an exclamation mark next to the direct edit feature, so I knew that one was the culprit. Turns out Inventor no longer finds/recognizes the vertext I selected as center point once the geometry text changes, even if the vertex belongs to a character from the text that does not change. (I assume this is because every character gets bent differently just a tiny little bit with varying glyph widths.)

Since I need to scale the text with the center point being roughly the geometric center of the text solid, I can't simply add e.g. a circle in the geometry text sketch somewhere near the center of the whole part that does not change its shape and selecting it as the scaling center point vertex. Neither can I add a circle or something at the exact geometric center of the text, because in order to be able to select it as scaling center point vertex I'd need to extrude it too, so it'll end up being visible in the finished part.

It appears like the direct edit scaling feature lacks an option to simply take the geometric center of all the selected solids, rather than specifying a vertex, and recalculate that center automatically whenever one of the solids changes. Or for even better control, allow picking a point from the source sketch rather than from the actual solid. And it would be even simpler if one could choose an user parameter for text size in the first place.

Until Inventor gets this functionality added - can anyone think of an alternative way to achieve what I want to do?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! I think I may know what is happening. For whatever reason, the located base vertex is missing after it was scaled or other upstream operation. Is the "text" a separate body? Or, it is part of the same main body? If you are scaling the whole body, you could use global coordinate to scale (click on Locate option). Then the scale would not depend on a vertex. It should work. If it does not, please share the file here so forum experts can take a look.

Many thanks!

[Anonymous]

The text extrusion is a separate body/solid.

I first extrude the text sketch as a separate solid - then use a direct edit on the new solid to scale it - and then a combine operation on the main part as base and the extruded text solid as tool body in subtract mode.

I've already used the locate button in the direct edit tool to see what other points I could select as center point, but it won't allow me to select anything else but various vertices of the text extrusion. How can I set up a global coordinate like you mentioned in my part that the locate option will accept?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Julian,

In the Direct Edit mini toolbar, click on the downward arrow button next to Locate. There should be an option "World", which does not require picking reference geometry. Could you try it and see if it works?

Many thanks!

[Anonymous]

There is no downward arrow button next to the Locate button on my direct edit toolbar.

For some reason though I was able to select faces, edges and midpoints on straight edges of the geometry around all of a sudden. That still didn't help me though, as I cannot select the geometric midpoint of the front face of the block on which the text it placed.

With now being able to select foreign geometry as scaling reference location, I was able to build a solution that works, although it isn't pretty:

I created yet another new solid by extruding a small circle placed exactly in my desired geometric center, so that one face of the resulting cylinder would be flush with the face of the block that is supposed to be embossed. This extrusion was sorted into the model feature list so that every emboss feature comes after it. I then redefined all the direct edit features for the scaling so that they would use the center point of the front face of the cylinder I just created as reference point. I then used the delete face function to get rid of the whole cylinder as the very last construction step in the list.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Julian,

The option is only available on forward create. On edit, the option is not available. You can delete the Direct Edit feature and create a new one. You will see the World option.

Many thanks!