How to set orientation of Derived Part "Sketch"

nicholas_witham

I have created a document of standard steel sections with 2 part studios, 1 called rectangular Steel the other is Square Steel. I have a configuration table for each sketch to deetermine the size of steel I import to my other documents.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/d5f4251246e657b5a9441d17/w/e4979b3335fdb9349b3d2c11/e/d6c1d8286eeae3e9e86e2d24

When I bring any of these into my current document (with the derived tool) I would like to be able to choose the plane on which the sketch gets attached to, and/or set the center position of the derived sketch.

Currently I bring the derived sketch into my current part studio, then I have to extrude it, then I can relocate/reorientate the part using the transform tool. This creates extra steps that i'd like to eliminate.

Does anybody see this as being possible?
If so, how?

nicholas_witham

The idea im going with right now is to have a different part studio for each different plane id like the sketch to be associated with. I can select this when inserting my derived sketch in my current part studio.

What id like to do now is be able to select the rotation of the sketch to any angle when inserting the derived sketch.
ie, I need to figure out how to have a text box for the user to type the required angle at the time of inserting the derived sketch.
The default would be set to 0 to make it easy.

nicholas_witham

Success.
I have created libraries (Part Studios) for each plane. Inside each library, I have a configuration table (for the standard sizes), and 3 configuration variables (1 for rotation, and 2 for linear offsets).

This method seems to work for me, but if there is a better way, id be happy to learn.

michael_mcclain

Are you aware of the beams featurescript?
What you are doing sounds like it could be achieved by using beams @NeilCooke . I'm not at my computer, but I'll link the featurescript, a video, and a user made library you can tie to when I get back.

michael_mcclain

Here is the featurescript: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/e15c2c668d138f01242d0c80/w/0664d65a957c7bfba7cfbddd/e/bd6831589391741e327fec75#_ga=2.142929980.883769298.1548597815-1552844877.1526996123

Here is a usermade library with many extra profiles you can reference to (it is a work in progress): https://cad.onshape.com/documents/ad05299d8001b55b1928304a/w/e630f3282c5ec90e2d8432c7/e/ef0605201534ea35869bd331

Here is a video on how to use it: https://www.onshape.com/videos/creating-weldments

Here is a technical briefing from the learning center: https://learn.onshape.com/learn/article/getting-started-with-beams

nicholas_witham

Thanks, I'll have a look at them

kenn_sebesta167

I realize this post is now two years old, but it still feels unresolved so I thought I'd bump it again. I would like to be able to import an arbitrary sketch and translate/rotate it to any arbitrary position. Is this possible without a workaround such as @nicholas_witham used?

john_mcclary

SuperDerive is handy for this kind of thing, you can derive/place/boolean all in one feature. Also you can import variables as well
SuperDerive | SuperDerive (onshape.com)

I use it all the time to add our logo into sheet-metal parts.
In the picture here I don't even need the sketch, just add an in place mate connector and rotate/transform right in the same feature.


Of course I needed to scale also, (maybe that should be added to SD..)
So I had one extra transform/boolean to finish



It's a very useful feature, defiantly a must-have on your tool bar.