Move Face Limitations?

larry_hawes

Curious about a move face command that will not execute. Are there limitations? Perhaps constraints? Works fine on a simple shape in another part studio but not the part I would like to move a face on.

Thank you

larry_hawes

Intersting...it seems to move all adjoining faces around a curve but no single face. It that expected behavior?

konstantin_shiriazdanov

Move face often fails because it can't create new faces or delete existing ones to meet the face transform constrains. It likes when all adjacent faces stay there.

larry_hawes

REALLY frustrating... Some parts will allow a single face to be moved, as expected, others require a series of adjacent faces to be selected (not all of which need moving) before any face will move. Useless in my real world needs.

mahir

Expanding on what @konstantin_shiriazdanov said, Move Face can only extend/trim existing adjacent faces in order to move the required face(s). But once these adjacent faces have reached the limits of extension/trimming, then the Move Face command will fail.

With a little practice, it's usually pretty straightforward to know what faces need to be selected to achieve the desired effect. If an adjacent can be extended/trimmed, then you're probably ok not selecting it. But for something like an attached fillet surface, those usually can't be extended and must be translated instead, necessitating adding the fillet surface to the Move Face selection.

larry_hawes

mahir said:

Expanding on what @konstantin_shiriazdanov said, Move Face can only extend/trim existing adjacent faces in order to move the required face(s). But once these adjacent faces have reached the limits of extension/trimming, then the Move Face command will fail.

With a little practice, it's usually pretty straightforward to know what faces need to be selected to achieve the desired effect. If an adjacent can be extended/trimmed, then you're probably ok not selecting it. But for something like an attached fillet surface, those usually can't be extended and must be translated instead, necessitating adding the fillet surface to the Move Face selection.

I THINK I understand the verbiage and with simple models OS will move individual faces with no problem, adjacent or not, but apparently as the model complexity increases individual faces cannot be moved for, most likely, the reasons stated above, not helping the situation. The challenge is I am 3D printing parts and am projecting sketch entities from one part to fit within another part. Those projected sketch lines leave no room for one 3D printed part to actually fit within the other. If I can 'move' specific faces to give the needed tolerance for fitment it's golden but so far a face will only move if enough adjacent faces (as stated, including those I do not want to move) are selected.

I even tried importing a parametric model but the same too many faces need to be selected before any will move. The alternative is to 'offset' each sketch a couple thou. But that adds a layer of complexity and will probably 'break the model'. Or is there an another alternative?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWdf4yej-6A

konstantin_shiriazdanov

What you shown on the video is actually pretty expected behavior, it can move every face individually if you uncheck "move fillet". Also you can use boolean subtract with offset option to make a global fit of one part in another

larry_hawes

AHA - There's some magic sauce and I thank you very much Konstantin. I'll explore the options you've suggested. Also will try "boolean subtract with offset option" if I can figure out what that means, or if the move face command does not (or I can't get it to) work.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!

mahir

If your intent is to create a controlled gap to account for tolerances, there are other options. First one that comes to mind is to create a surface copy of the faces in question using Offset Surface. Then, use the Thicken command to remove material in one or both directions. You may need to extend the boundary of the copied surface using Move Boundary. This technique requires more steps than using Move Face directly, but it is more robust and less likely to fail due to the nuances of adjacent faces.

robert_stiles

I'm curious as to why move face can't take a negative number? I'm controlling it though a configuration, and having to integrate the flip direction toggle, depending on if a number is positive or negative, is not possible. I understand that if the number of faces changed it falls over, but this is not happening in my scenario , so why not enable reverse directions as a negative number? 

Extrude can do it, but then I have to swich between Add and Remove, which is also not possible. 

And moving it out past the max I'd ever need to go, then doing another move face back again as two features is a pain, and dose not feel very robust. 

glen_dewsbury

Have you tried replace face with an offset?

robert_stiles

I like replace face, but its not going to work here. Unless I build other faces as guidance geometry to follow. I just need to move a lot of faces, back and forth at normal to themselves (for tolerance), i.e. perfect for move face... but they need to go "in" OR "out "dependent on a calculation, which is itself dependent on a configuration.

Extrude can take an negative number and/or a direction toggle, I just can't see why "move face" can't cope with a negative number. If you put a negative number in, you can see its limited to 0-500000. 

Seems an obvious one, and actually not that uncommon a scenario.

Thanks for the suggestion. 

robert_stiles

I'll put it on the feature request thing...

robert_stiles

Its here if anyone wants to help this stay afloat in the bottomless well of improvement requests. 
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/20793/move-face-feature-to-allow-for-negative-numbers-and-not-to-have-to-toggle-opposite-direction#latest

EvanReese

robert_stiles said:

Its here if anyone wants to help this stay afloat in the bottomless well of improvement requests. 
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/20793/move-face-feature-to-allow-for-negative-numbers-and-not-to-have-to-toggle-opposite-direction#latest

I was curious if it was an actual limitation of the move face operation or just a limit in the code. I copied the original feature code from here, and modified it  here so it takes negative numbers. It seems to work alright, so I'm not sure why it's been limited in that way. Maybe because it's unintuitive to have negative numbers and a direction toggle? In any case, it sounds like it would help you with configuring your thing. Help yourself to it.

robert_stiles

Thats great. Thanks so much

I guess it is a bit unintuitive, but if a user does not want to use negative numbers, they can use the toggle? It just seems like an oversight.

And as you say, for configurations, this is really helpful. Onshape seem to have forgotten about configurations. They are so great and only half a step away from being even more powerful. It needs a way to define rules that link configurations together, including Boolean config choices.  

EvanReese

robert_stiles said:

Thats great. Thanks so much

I guess it is a bit unintuitive, but if a user does not want to use negative numbers, they can use the toggle? It just seems like an oversight.

And as you say, for configurations, this is really helpful. Onshape seem to have forgotten about configurations. They are so great and only half a step away from being even more powerful. It needs a way to define rules that link configurations together, including Boolean config choices.  

If I recall, configurations showed up years after a feature like Move Face. From what I've seen of the devs and their code I doubt they just didn't think to allow negatives and there's probably a reason. All that said, a solution for configuring things that might need to flip like this would be very welcome.

robert_stiles

I had a situation where I was very glad that move face did NOT accept negative numbers today in a complex configuration... so I've changed my improvement request to "move face" that has a Boolean toggle to accept negative numbers, or not. 
Best of both worlds! 
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/20793/move-face-feature-to-allow-for-negative-numbers-and-not-to-have-to-toggle-opposite-direction#latest

EvanReese

robert_stiles said:

I had a situation where I was very glad that move face did NOT accept negative numbers today in a complex configuration

I'd love to know what kind of situation this was