Expanded Metal

Jon_Schlemmer

Is there a good way to show expanded metal?

Jake_Rosenfeld

@Jon_Schlemmer

I'm not sure I understand your question, could you go into more detail?
Here is a webinar from last year about our sheet metal features:
https://www.onshape.com/videos/designing-with-sheet-metal-in-onshape-051718

michael3424

He's probably talking about something like this:

kent_henderson

Exactly! Jon left for the day but this is what we're trying to represent. Is there a way to accomplish this? We use expanded metal in several of our products and it's difficult to represent accurately. We use both flattened and standard expanded metals.

Marc_Miller

I know this post is a bit old now, but I just ran into wanting to do the same and have a section of expanded metal in a project.
 @kent_henderson or @Jon_Schlemmer did you come up with a solution?

john_mcclary

I typically just draw it as flattend (or just a transparent square)
then make it as thick as the maximum thickness

but if you really need the accuracy it will come at a performance cost.
I would draw the top of one of the diamonds in 3d the pattern it in two directions.
Then draw your cut out pattern and extrude/intersect thru to get your final result.

Marc_Miller

Thank you @john_mcclary Your suggestion of making it transparent gave me the idea to bring in a jpg image of the expanded metal and put that in position.  Cheers.

BenTaylor

This FeatureScript creates a visual approximation of a wire mesh that could be used as well.  

Marc_Miller

@BenTaylor  Cool I had not run across that one, thank you.