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Well the thing that got me curious about it was a sliding door kind of a thing that traced an unintuitive path. I think should have worked with it, but I was struggling to do it, so I ended up patterning it manually. With the help of 3D points and Query Variable, I was still able to get a parametric query for the points to do a fit spline through.

Oh btw, now that approximateSpline is here I'm opting for that over fit spline, so that's another reason to explore. But mostly, I'm just following my curiosity and seeing where it goes.

I believe op is short for "operation" (ev is short for evaluate)

extrude is the user facing feature. This is literally the standard feature that shows up in the tool bar.
A feature is just a function, so features can call other features. There is nothing stopping you from calling the standard extrude from your feature - and in some corner cases (like sheet metal) its the better option.

opExtrude is the base level call to modify the context, its as low as your featurescript gets before things get sent to the black box that is the back end of Onshape. While opExtrude is missing some functionality of extrude - that missing code also means its going to be a bit more efficient. Standard features have a lot of quality of life meant for users that your FeatureScript might not need. A simple feature might not be noticeable, but when you get to more complex features, the regen time of your code can quickly add up.

There exist op functions that don't have a full feature counterpart, and some full features don't have a base level operation.

Not sure if it can be done in the current part studio, but if you use a PartStudioData input for a feature and select the part studio from another part studio, the PartStudioData input contains all the configuration data.

Hi everyone,

So I made my own ISO grid featurescript. I tried out the other two feature scripts that can create isogrid patterns, and I found that Julia's is fast but rudimentary, and Evan Reese's is immensely powerful but slightly slower than I would like, and is missing a couple of features I wanted. Of course, the next logical step was for me to create my own from the ground up…

Link: Engineering Grid

Features:

• Create ISO and Ortho grid patterns.
• Extend the pattern to a customizable border.
• Delete small holes that appear at the border of the pattern face.
• Fillet internal corners within the pattern pockets.
• Delete pockets with bad fillets.
• Align the pattern perfectly with an edge.

The basic functionality is closer to Julia's script, where you select a face and the part you want to create the isogrid on, and there it is.

I've added borders to all the edges of the pattern, the thickness of which can be adjusted, as well as the dimensions of the pattern, and so on.

One of the more interesting features I've added is the ability to remove any triangles or parts of triangles that are smaller than a certain percentage of the original pattern. So, no need to painstakingly remove every small hole that appears at the border.

You can also fillet the lower inside edges of the pattern in order to make some really professional ISO grid patterns. I’ve also tried to solve an issue with so many fillets by adding an option to remove pockets that potentially have bad fillets.

So I just posted about my guide pins feature script a couple of days ago, but I've actually been working on this for much longer. From the testing I have done, this script runs a little faster than others (Not Julia’s. Hers is blazingly fast), and I’ve tried to optimize it a little to make it run faster, but there’s only so much you can do when subtracting a bunch of triangles. Please let me know if you have any other quality of life improvements for ISO or Ortho grid patterns. I tried to add the major ones I could think of, but Evan Reese’s Grid Extrude can center the pattern on any point you choose, which would be a good addition. 

I also want to add more patterns, but I only got around to adding triangles and rectangles. If you want hexagonal or circular patterns, let me know, and I can add them pretty quickly.

Definitely go check out the other two scripts:

• Evan Reese: Grid Extrude (forum post)
• Julia: ISOgrid