Is there a way that the base planes automatically adjust to the size of the part?

René_Sartorio

EvanReese

not that i'm aware of, but it would be nice sometimes.

EvanReese

not that i'm aware of, but it would be nice sometimes.

chadstoltzfus

Sounds like a job for a custom feature. I imagine you could drive the plane off of the bounding box of the owner body of the face and maybe have a parameter for additional entities you might want to add to the bounding box

S1mon

Solidworks has had autosizing planes for years. Ideally it's just a toggle in the plane edit/creation dialog. I like @chadstoltzfus 's idea of an "owner body". It could default to the entire part studio, and then allow selection of part(s), sketch(es) or surface(s). I really hate how in Solidworks the bounding box of a part or assembly is driven by sketches or planes, when those types are hidden, but not individually hidden.

chrisjh777

Vote for this IR sumitted years ago:  https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/2595/auto-sizing-of-planes-to-part-s

romeograham

The default plane size is 150 x 150mm - regardless of how big the thing you're working on is. The other thing I miss from SolidWorks is that if you make a plane using another plane as reference (say, an Offset)...the child plane takes the size of the parent plane. When you resize the parent (manually, or automatically) the child plane also resizes! (this would likely be the result with the bounding box / custom feature script idea above - which is a good idea! I've been using Calculated Bounds bodies more and more lately).

billy2

@René_Sartorio 

I don't use planes & axis. 

I gave up on them years ago and have never looked back.




Stretch the geometry.


My datums are well behaved.

I can have cylindrical datums:



I have even used lofted surfaces as datums for complex part lines. 



So what's better than planes & axis?  faces & curves. One of the major problems with planes & axis is they don't transfer when exporting, face & curves do.

When I export my old solidworks layouts, not only do I get the geometry, but my datums come over as faces & curves. I didn't use planes & axis in SW. It's a drag when transferring design layouts and you lose planes & axis. Datums are a huge part of design intent and I wish to keep them. Losing them in a translation is a shame.

This is extremely controversial and has been since the beginning. I choose faces & curves as datum geometry because you don't lose them even when transferring to other CAD systems.

Face & curves are ubiquitous where planes & axis are local to a particular CAD system. I'm a believer in datums and want them to stick around.

EvanReese

I stumbled on the fact that you can use featurescript to extrude a plane, which I thought of as more of a curiosity, but maybe someone could use it as the starting point for an actual useful feature. Here's my very basic example.

EvanReese

@billy2
That's an interesting approach. I've not usually done it that way, but I see the logic there. Thanks for sharing!

billy2

@Evan_Reese I knew someone would write a feature script scaling the 1st 3 planes. Man you're getting good at writing scripts. 

I manually change these 3 planes, glad you added an automatic updater. I'm going to start using it.



Here's a basic datum setup and the reason why we should all learn them and use them.

On my motorcycle lamp and the definition for flexibility, it's nothing more than the location of a mate connector:

To create parametric change in a Harley rear lamp, I'm just controlling the location & orientation of a mate connector through configuration variables.



Changing the mate connector's orientation updates the outer housing. This is my design intent.


Designing the lens cap:

The 1st thing I do is define a datum, in my case an extruded surface, which is pretty and sized properly. The reason for posting in this thread. The next step is to declare it so the next guy knows what I'm doing. 



My surface datum is so important because all the features in the lens folder reference this datum. If the datum moves, all the child features update, It's pretty important to keep this pure because it's the heart beat of design intent.


Parametric modeling that has predictable change requires good datum structures. There's no other way. Please focus on the declaration and  simplicity of these declarations in your models. There are guys like me looking for this stuff in your designs.

EvanReese

billy2 said:

@Evan_Reese I knew someone would write a feature script scaling the 1st 3 planes. Man you're getting good at writing scripts. 

I manually change these 3 planes, glad you added an automatic updater. I'm going to start using it.

Thanks! For the record, I don't think the extrude plane feature really has any utility right now, but I just wanted to share it since I thought it was a fascinating little easter egg I found by accident when making another feature, and maybe someone will find a way to hack that behavior usefully.

7000psi

billy2 said:

@René_Sartorio 

I don't use planes & axis. 

I gave up on them years ago and have never looked back.


________________________________________________

Okay, you've got my attention. I personally hate the constraints of planes and have been looking at a way to design that doesn't slow me down or force me to create dozens of child planes just to create something moderately complex.

Thanks for sharing. Now tell me more. LOL

Chris

I

glen_dewsbury

7000psi said:

billy2 said:

@René_Sartorio 

I don't use planes & axis. 

I gave up on them years ago and have never looked back.


________________________________________________

Okay, you've got my attention. I personally hate the constraints of planes and have been looking at a way to design that doesn't slow me down or force me to create dozens of child planes just to create something moderately complex.

Thanks for sharing. Now tell me more. LOL

Chris

I

Hey Chris. If you're looking to just reduce the number of planes showing up in feature list use the mate connecter tool in the sketch dialog and they will be consumed. You can also use the faces of exiting parts. If you can outline another work stream without any planes I'd certainly be interested.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/b692ba672f837e71b65faba3/w/ccaac23887d50996264c013c/e/d4cb9980c75b7b4d4783a422