help with guidance in a feature script for will solids with patters like lattices

otaolafr

Hello

Looking for some help from the feature scripts masters. After a conversation with someone from the support team, he told me that a feature like this would be possible to do it and as I have no idea/experience with feature scripts coding I would love some help/guidance/recommendations to where to look for writing my own script for this (it is for academy purposes)

I work with 3D printing of different structures and analyzing different benefits between their structures, the main part of them are structures like lattices (this of this style: https://grabcad.com/library/dode-lattice-structure-2)

These structures have a “seed cell” that repeats in the three spatial dimensions generating an interconnected regular structure.

When I tried to do directly in onshape with normal features it was taking a lot of time.

What I would like to do is have three bodies:

1rst one a “volume cell” (example a cube) with this I could change the cell sizes of it.

2nd the “seed cell” that would be contained inside the volume cell where I would be able to modify the seed cell internal sizes, for example, if their beams are round it, square, etc… and the sizes of the beams.

3rd  “base geometry” that would be filled up with the pattern of the seed cell, for example, a cylinder that would be filled with the pattern and then intersect the pattern with the cylinder (something that I think would make it easy is that my "base geometries" would always be a solid without any howls inside or complex geometries)
the 1rst and the 2nd would be inside the feature script file where the 3rd would be in another document where i would use the sc

So, what I would like to do from the last three parts would be, make a document where it has the script and also the “volume cell” and “seed cell” where the script would ask the different parameters of it and auto generate the seed cell geometry:

Parameters: ( L1,L2,L3,seed type, seed beam,D1,D2,ALPHA,BETA, select part) where L1,2,3 would be the sizes of the “volume cell”, seed type the list with the different geometry of the seeds, seed beam the different beams of the seed (like circle, square, diamond) and D1 and D2 the parameters for the beams (for example if it is circle it would need only D1) and lastly ALPHA and BETA the angle of rotation of the cell (like alpha and beta=45 the seed cell would be rotated 45° and then repeated in the three dimensions). And the select the part that would be the “base geometry” that would be used to intersect with the pattern of seed cells. One thing I though would be to make it easier (maybe it makes it easier not sure?) would be rotated the “base geometry” by ALPHA and BETA before filling it up with the pattern as the alpha and beta would be relatives between the two of them.

I was recommended nTopology for this work as it gives a direct software for this, sadly I don’t have the money to buy the full software and the free one for the student license is not supported and I came across multiple bugs problems with it and without the support I can’t do much with it.

 

MBartlett21

@Otaola_Franco
You should be able to use <a rel="nofollow" href="https://cad.onshape.com/FsDoc/library.html#opPattern-Context-Id-map">opPattern</a> for patterning the parts.