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Re: Easy method for exporting sheet metal flat pattern to STEP file?
Are you cutting the flat patterns yourself? On a laser machine? DXF is what is mostly used for flat patterns in industry, not STEP. And any laser/waterjet machine will accept dxf. If you are instead sending the parts to a sheetmetal vendor, then you would send them a STEP of the fully bent part.
Re: How to Reference Individual Sketch Entities
Rectangles aren't a single body, they are actually just 4 line segments that are constrainted.
So FeatureScript is creating 4 bodies with id "sketchsegmentid+left/right/top/bottom". So you need to reference each rectangle side individually.
Here is an example.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/a1f40918d4d33ea9daed6320/w/9e622d0c612befc74430a282/e/6d1aae827bc128ec1296c8fe
Re: Hole tool not following direction of Mate Connector or an actual Plane as start plane, seems broken.
The "start from" selection does not define the direction, the selection in the first box does.
If you use a sketch point the direction will always be normal to the sketch plane. Instead of using the sketch point directly, just use a mate connector centered on your sketch point and re-orient it as needed.
In this example you are really complicating things, all you need to do is select a mate connector on the end of the line segment from sketch2, you don't need anything else!
Re: Optics: Custom Feature
Fair enough about keeping things simple and this not being a "full" analysis tool. However it's really not that far off!
You've got the reflection and refraction covered and methods to shoot a bunch of rays through the geometry and that's really the bulk of it!
While understand there is no concept of "intensity" of a ray in this model, my thought would be that the density of rays could be a good proxy for that.
So instead of a cone with evenly distributed rays a lambertian distribution would have fewer and fewer rays at larger angles.
Re: Boolean operation results in non-manifold body
No Boolean is needed when no voids are left in play. You have drawn 2 unnecessary lines that are leaving a void and are making a non manifold condition during the extrude. and cannot Boolean together.
Re: How do make this point a midpoint between outer edge and centre line?
Another way to set up quarter points using an array. Can be used for any subdivisions of the section. 1/8, 1/4. 1/3 etc.
Number of points plus 1. delete spacing dimension and make last point coincident.
Simple change of divisions.
Re: Help with simulate a force load
Stress Simulations are for static stress analysis only - this means no moving parts. If you need to do kinematics and collision detection you'll need to use different software.
Re: Cutting dimensions for tubes, parallel to the tube.
Seems an "aligned" dimension feature request should be proposed if it hasn't been already . Pick two points then pick a line to be parallel with them click dim location.
MDesign
Re: Tipps for oragnization of documents
Early in the design process, it can make a lot of sense to have everything all in one document, except maybe purchased parts or anything else you know isn't likely to change. However, it does slow things down. It really depends on how much you're waiting for rebuilds. If the performance hit isn't making you miserable, it may be fine to keep things in a single document as long as you can. Within a single document you can switch derives and assembly instances from workspace references to version references and back, if you want. This can help control some of the rebuilds and get you ready for splitting out the tabs into separate documents later.
Keep in mind that a document has one history tree. You can branch and merge, which is powerful, but this affects every tab in the document. At a certain point, even as a team of one, you'll run into things where it would be nice to have some things in separate documents to have more fine-grained control over this.
You can also try splitting out tabs into other documents and if it's too annoying, you can move them back.
Without seeing the complexity of your parts or part studios, it's hard to tell how much pain you might be creating with a single document, but things like imported parts and drawings do start to sound like you really could split things out. Imports are typically pretty static. Drawings aren't live anyway (you have to refresh them manually).
Keep in mind that versions are free. I often make several in a day just to mark major progress, so if I really screw something up, I have a clear place to revert to. I leave the "Vxx" in the name and just add a short reminder of what changed in the name. Sometimes I'm lazy and just leave the "Vxx". It really takes a second or two. Updating all the dependent tabs to the latest references can be tedious, but getting used to this process is valuable.
To some degree, this all depends on how you are prototyping or releasing your parts for production. When you start making prototypes, you don't want to make new parts that have the same geometry just because some references got updated. You'll want to be more deliberate about revisions. Certainly once tooling is involved, things get a lot more expensive to change and you don't want a part to change without notice.
S1mon