Separating and customizing mirrored parts

jim_brooks

I am trying to make a part to clamp a caliper jaw. It's composed of two halves, each with a pocket for the jaw. They are bolted together to clamp the jaw.
First issue, when mirroring, there is no space between the parts. I mirrored off the right side as the front face put them face to face which I didn't want.
Second issue, when mirrored, there is no space between the parts and I see no options to change this.
Third issue, I have some pins extruded out from one side and I would like to make them pockets on the other side to align the two sides.
How would I do this.

matthew_stacy

@jim_brooks, there are likely dozens of ways to skin that cat (sticking the question 1:  "how to space the mirrored parts away from one another"):

1. Offset the sketch geometry from your original part and mirror the parent part about one of the default planes (e.g. front)
2. Mirror about a mate connector (which you can edit to offset the face of the parent part) instead of a plane
3. Create a plane, offset from face of parent part, to mirror about
4. Apply the "transform" tool to move parent or child part after mirroring
5. ...

matthew_stacy

@jim_brooks, there are likely dozens of ways to skin that cat (sticking the question 1:  "how to space the mirrored parts away from one another"):

1. Offset the sketch geometry from your original part and mirror the parent part about one of the default planes (e.g. front)
2. Mirror about a mate connector (which you can edit to offset the face of the parent part) instead of a plane
3. Create a plane, offset from face of parent part, to mirror about
4. Apply the "transform" tool to move parent or child part after mirroring
5. ...

jim_brooks

Thanks Matthew. That fixed it now a few more tweaks and I'll have my part. Thanks so much for your help. So much to learn so little time.
It would be nice if rather than needing to use another tool, this tool mirror provided this facility directly.
Have a great week.
Jim

matthew_stacy

@jim_brooks, holler if you're still wrestling with the 2nd part of your original question ... interlocking features on the paired parts.  Boolean-subtract is often a good approach for that sort of task.

eric_pesty

jim_brooks said:

Thanks Matthew. That fixed it now a few more tweaks and I'll have my part. Thanks so much for your help. So much to learn so little time.
It would be nice if rather than needing to use another tool, this tool mirror provided this facility directly.
Have a great week.
Jim

It looks like @ma@matthew_stacy might have mixed up the name of the tabs in his example but the mirror using a mate connector option is just one step (show in the "transform" tab) :
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/a19c79e7afb170ed80a422a5/w/48afbd212cd720a2eba7157b/e/e17f37ab9a542d04205dc308?renderMode=0&uiState=634043ee60b71f6a75d71de0

In this specific case the part you are mirroring appears to be symmetric (i.e. not actually a different shape at this point) so you could also do a circular 180deg pattern (using a mate connector as the origin) or just a "transform by mate connector" (with copy body option checked), which would both achieve this in one step as well.