Honeycomb Linear Feature Remove Pattern missing instances

david_riedell

I'm trying to create a honeycomb pattern in an extruded cylinder, but when I try to do a linear feature pattern on my extruded remove (the two hexagons at the center), for some reason not all of the pattern instances are extruded (removed from the cylinder). Does anyone know why this is?

lemon1324

I'm not sure, looks like something about how the decision of whether the feature intersects the part works. 

At any rate, I'd do what the Hex Infill FeatureScript does to accomplish this: extrude all of your cutting volumes as new, and then boolean subtract once at the end.  This might be a bit less robust to pattern changes if you're doing it manually though.

david_riedell

@lemon1324
Good advice, thanks.

For posterity, here's what I did:

I split the part i wanted to put the hex pattern on into 2 parts, and put a sketch with my honeycomb pattern the surface of the circle along with a larger circle that I will use later.

I rotated the view to see from underneath the surface. This is the extruded larger circle from the sketch above  (extruded upward) plus the hexagonal pattern extruded downward.

I used a centered linear pattern to create my tool for removal. The large disk is used to keep all of these extruded hexagons as one part rather than dozens of individual parts.
 

I unhid the original disc so you can see how the linear pattern intersects it.


I did a boolean subtract using the orange part on the blue part to create my honeycomb pattern.

Then I did a Boolean Union to merge the honeycomb with the rest of the part shown in the first picture.


There's probably a more efficient way to do this, but it worked for me.

lemon1324

I'm not sure, looks like something about how the decision of whether the feature intersects the part works. 

At any rate, I'd do what the Hex Infill FeatureScript does to accomplish this: extrude all of your cutting volumes as new, and then boolean subtract once at the end.  This might be a bit less robust to pattern changes if you're doing it manually though.

david_riedell

@lemon1324
Good advice, thanks.

For posterity, here's what I did:

I split the part i wanted to put the hex pattern on into 2 parts, and put a sketch with my honeycomb pattern the surface of the circle along with a larger circle that I will use later.

I rotated the view to see from underneath the surface. This is the extruded larger circle from the sketch above  (extruded upward) plus the hexagonal pattern extruded downward.

I used a centered linear pattern to create my tool for removal. The large disk is used to keep all of these extruded hexagons as one part rather than dozens of individual parts.
 

I unhid the original disc so you can see how the linear pattern intersects it.


I did a boolean subtract using the orange part on the blue part to create my honeycomb pattern.

Then I did a Boolean Union to merge the honeycomb with the rest of the part shown in the first picture.


There's probably a more efficient way to do this, but it worked for me.

MBartlett21

@david_riedell
Cool method!