Hole Tool Feature Question

coleman

What angle (drill point angle) is left in the bottom of a blind hole?  Is this going to be adjustable?

What angle does the countersink leave?  Is this going to adjustable?

andrew_troup

125.5 degrees (??), doesn't currently appear to be adjustable
70.529 deg (?????????), doesn't currently appear to be adjustable

I'm guessing this is a preliminary teaser, not a serious proposition

coleman

@andrew_troup I measured close to the same.  These aren't standard.  I have never used a drill with a 125.5 tip angle or a countersink with a 70.529 degree. 

Whats the purpose of these angles?  Weird. 

nav

Hi @coleman after measuring the drill point angle is 125.5 degrees, not a standard drill point angle (60 Plastics, 90 Non ferrous, 118 general purpose, 135 hard materials).  

jakeramsley

The angles aren't currently adjustable.  They should be 45 degrees for the counter sink angle and 118 degrees for the tip angle.  I'll look into this as to why this isn't behaving correctly.

Like all features, hole is a feature we are working on iteratively.  Please post additional things that you need/wish for in a hole feature.

andrew_troup

There was  a great thread on this forum a while back laying out peoples' detailed wishes for a hole feature tool. Maybe this one is important enough (and people care enough about it) to warrant a detailed, carefully thought-out questionnaire, by someone who has trolled through the material already traversed, and surveyed what the "best of the rest" are providing? People could be invited to rank various options in order of preference, and then at the end invited to add anything they think is missing, or needs further improvement.

@3dcad had some particularly inspiring examples to do with positioning hole patterns relative to a corner of a mounting feature, and then being able to flip the same hole, or hole pattern, to the same relativity vs the other corners. It would be nice to see a seamless integration into linear and circular pattern tools, too, (or if patterns are made integral with the hole feature, the UI should look and feel the same, to the extent possible).

I would urge that attributes be easily and smoothly customisable, and those customisations need to be easily saved, possible in multiple sets. If someone has developed a cool way of threading holes within 0.5D of the bottom of a blind hole on a particular machine or process, it's galling to have some piece of code repeatedly over-ruling his or her judgement, or saying it needs to be 1.5D minimum. Or whatever.

PS: If the default drill tip angle is to be 118 deg (I'd be perfectly happy with a round 120, personally), can I respectfully request that the countersink angle be 90 deg (by the same measure), not 45?

And absolutely, let these parameters be customisable (particularly the drill tip angle; we can easily use "chamfer" for countersinks at non-standard angles)

andrew_troup

OK, a bouquet to soften the brickbats:

I really like the way the hole position sketch has been treated as a separate issue from actual faces on the parent part.
If only this crystal ball had been looked into a bit more closely in  Solidworks' Hole Wizard's early days.
I lost count of how many times I clicked on the wrong thing, and got shunted off into the wrong interface (3D vs 2D sketch), before I unlearned the previous behaviour...

(Refer https://cad.onshape.com/help/index.htm#cshid=hole

...  "Steps to create counterbore holes", which shows an instance of inserting holes on a non-planar face)

 Haven't yet got around to finding how to distribute holes around a conical or cylindrical (or, dare I say it, compound curved!) face in Onshape. I'd be surprised if that was baked already, and if not I'll try to come up with some helpful suggestions.

coleman

I think at the very least a hole tool feature should include:

1) A drill index.  Standard (letter, number and fractional drills). Metric drills
2) Tap drill selection- based on desired thread percent. 
3) Ability to adjust drill (and and countersink) angle. 

jakeramsley

andrew_troup said:

PS: If the default drill tip angle is to be 118 deg (I'd be perfectly happy with a round 120, personally), can I respectfully request that the countersink angle be 90 deg (by the same measure), not 45?

Yes, my mistake reading the code.  It is 90 degrees by the same measure.

andrew_troup

I'm extremely impressed by the hole feature tool, having watched the video and carefully considered the implications of the conceptual underpinnings. I think it's trivial to fix up the geometrical specs of the holes (and hole patterns) and the interface of those specs with the user, per the preceding banter and requests, but what's crucial to have architected correctly is the way a given hole spec interprets how and where to create itself to correct depth, for a variety of locations and part conformations, with a minimum amount of human fuss, bother and confusion.

I have to say that at first encounter that part looks seriously smart.

The ability to use multiple sketches, with different directions, is impressive, and particularly the apparent intelligence, namely the way hole starting planes are decoupled from sketch plane location (of course, that degree of machine intelligence, if there is no possibility of intervention or correction of aberrant cases, has to meet some thorny challenges before it proves itself!)

In relation to 'different directions', I do have a question about parts where the hole direction is ambiguous - Imagine a part where extensions of the solid wrapped around both sides of the plane with the sketch points: How do the holes know which extension is the one we want the hole to penetrate?

I'm thinking we may need some way to "flip" the orientation of a plane - I would rather that was added, if need be, rather than just see the hole feature tool 'enhanced' to enable holes to be flipped.

I say this because control over the direction of planes will have multiple benefits further down the track.
I say this with some confidence, because certain quite high-end modellers have failed to provide this (and sometimes it sucks)

jordan_cannon

Glad to finally have this tool available in Onshape. It's pretty basic so far, but the ability to use multiple sketches with different orientations looks like it will be really handy. Most of the time I create holes using sketch points the same way the Onshape tool currently requires. However, for holes centered on a circular face, it would be really nice to have the option to skip the sketch by selecting a start face and a circular reference from within the tool itself.

kevin_elliott

Personally I would find this hole tool a lot more useful if the bottom angle was adjustable right to flat. This would largely eliminate the need for the geometry for extrude/cut holes with flat bottoms and counterbores.