Mass Properties

JWP

I know i can select a part and click the scales to get the mass, however, is there a way to have a variable that displays the mass of a part?

I found the featurescript Mv Measure Value, which is very handy, but it doesn't do mass.

I also found evApproximateMassProperties in the featurescript manual, but i cant work out if it gives me a way to display the mass of a particular part.

Alex_Kempen

You probably want to use the getProperties method with PropertyType.MATERIAL to get the material of selected parts, which can then be used to get the density. Unfortunately, however, this is not usable inside of the feature body since parts regenerate (and FeatureScripts run) before user-defined properties are applied to parts, so calling getProperties inside the feature body doesn't actually work. Thus, if your FeatureScript doesn't set the density of the parts inside of it, you have to jump through some hoops to get the user defined density, usually by setting an always hidden parameter to be equal to the density via editing logic and then using that parameter's value inside your feature body. If you really want to get the user defined density, I can go into more detail about how to do it.

evApproximateMassProperties can estimate the mass of parts, but it takes a density as an input, so it probably isn't the most useful to you unless you can get the density first. 

daniele_grandi

@JWP
did you figure out how to do this? I'm also interested