Exploded view diagram

CaptainBisquick

Could someone give some recommendations on how they would go about creating an exploded view drawing, in OnShape?

I'm working on a design where a fluid flows through 3 panels, inside an enclosure, and I'd like to illustrate this with an exploded view. I can do well designing parts for printing or machining, but producing mechanical drafts/illustrations is outside my area of experience.

brucebartlett

Onshape still does not have functionality in this area but there are a few work arounds you could use to get a result.

One way you could achieve an exploded view is by using an assembly and dragging all the parts out of position to an exploded state. In my example below I suppressed all mates before moving the parts with the triad. If you really want to get fancy you can add duplicate mates with an exploded offset and manually suppress and un-suppress to go between the two states. You can then make a drawing of this assembly, to get the isometric view I had to use the project view and chose the front view and click off at 45 degs. See below:

 

CaptainBisquick

Thanks for the suggestion. I think I would still having trouble getting the result I want, because I need to include lines to illustrate the direction of the fluid. I also don't immediately see how to get the orientation I need in my drawing view. What I want is an isometric cutaway view, with arrows along the plane of the cutaway, representing the fluid. I decided to export the model and do this one illustration in a polygon modeler (Blender in my case). This is working out really well. I imagine a toon shader will give me the draft illustration look.

andrew_troup

You can currently draw extra lines within an Onshape drawing (to indicate fluid direction), but as yet it is not possible to constrain them to the pre-existing lines automatically created by Onshape to depict outlines and edges. Hence you would have to align by eye, and realign if a view needed shifting.
You can also cut away a part of the model by extruding an orthogonal rectangle and removing it.
Hence what you want to do is probably doable, but scarcely (at present) practical.