Silhouette Outline

philip_thomas

In my CAD career, this has come up several times. Most commonly, the need is to make blister packaging, but has appeared in several guises.

In principle, the desire is to shine a (collimated) light on a part and draw an outline around the shadow.
This is actually quite difficult.
I was discussing this need around the coffee machine and Paul Chastell piped up that we had a function that did this! WOW!
So, for what it's worth, here's a ONE CALL custom feature that does magic



https://cad.onshape.com/documents/447c6fe48283e84c4c382e67/w/21976dd0fa3c061779d3d951/e/952b0a5aee92f9251ac36bcc

The inputs are:
1) The (single) part that you wish to project.
2) A FACE (must be a face), that you wish to project onto.

Have fun!

owen_sparks

Very nice, I could have used that this afternoon 😀

konstantin_shiriazdanov

@MBartlett21 was first who discovered this feature for us 

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/201b33ee5450cefbca3b34b8/v/5dce98c8641f6bc483f4fa25/e/03f0c71d4856a8408c7766a0

NeilCooke

Yes, @philip_thomas, get with the times...

MBartlett21

Mine also accepts faces to project.

@konstantin_shiriazdanov
PS: This feature is what Onshape uses to help cut sheet metal.

paul_chastell

  Awwwww, and @philip_thomas was so excited when I told him about this operation yesterday! By the way, being added for sheet metal is why its flagged as internal: I tested it very thoroughly for the somewhat narrow set of cases we would get there but no further. Happy to see it working on much more complex examples though! 

philip_thomas

I give you cake, and you hang me.
I give you pearls, and you root in the mud.
I am nice to everyone, and Owen wishes the entire company "Merry Christmas except Philip!"

That's it, i am going on a road trip for a week and then on vacation for 10 more days.
See you all later

owen_sparks

Yeah, can't remember exactly why I said that. I think it was jealousy centred around you being Welshish but having escaped to live in the US and getting to play with aeroplanes, whilst I was sitting at work in the sodding rain again! 

Anyway happy travels

Cheers, Owen-Grumpy-Git S.

philip_thomas

Owen - I knew you were kidding obviously!
Heading to Chicago (-10C) and then to Costa Rica

michael3424

philip_thomas said:

Owen - I knew you were kidding obviously!
Heading to Chicago (-10C) and then to Costa Rica

Yeah, Chicago should warm up to -10 °C by next week.  We hit -27°C here yesterday.  Mind the snow, though.

philip_thomas

^^^ OMG!!!

guillaume_martin

This seems to be great ! It is exactly what I need !
I need to search for the "Cross Sectionnal Area" to have the "Drag force" of an assembly ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics) )

Excuse me I am a newby : What are the steps to use your function ??

Thanks a  lot !

Guillaume
New OneShape fan :-) !

Jake_Rosenfeld

@guillaume_martin

You can use Philip's custom feature by just going to the link he provided and pressing the "+ custom features" button in the toolbar of that document (No need to copy the document or do any work on your part besides adding his tool to your toolbar).

If you are specifically interesting in making your own similar custom feature, you can take a look into the FeatureScript tab of his document to see how the feature is written.  It is based on the `opCreateOutline` operation.

tony_459

Wow, that's awesome. Thanks for sharing!

Ron_van_Dijk

Hi Philip,

Exactly what I needed! Great for checking the projected area for moldmakers and injection molders in calculating the clamping forces of the injection molding machine needed.

Ron van Dijk

NeilCooke

@Ron_van_Dijk - this capability is also built into the stock feature in the mold toolset https://cad.onshape.com/documents/7543d74a1c21c7b27ebab24c/w/648480c544b2f15540cf0867/e/5217db10fb840954e5348228

christopher_dziuba

Incredible that this is hidden! It's saving me A LOT of time.

christopher_dziuba

What else isn't documented?