How to achieve equal distances in a hexagon bee pattern?

Voyager

Hey, I want to create a hexagon bee pattern on the lid of my raspberry pi case.
Like this:

But as seen, I cant get the distances to be same.

I first made a sketch: 

Extruded it as new and made a horizontal pattern out of the upper hexagon, the same I did to second hexagon.

Then I again made a vertical pattern out of the previous patterns, but I cant get those distances to be the same.
I have no idea how to solve it mathematically right now, could you please help me?

Thanks!

glen_dewsbury

Here is one way to try. Once a sketch pattern is defined the constraints and dimensions can be removed from the construction lines that define the pattern and replaced with angle and spacing dimensions.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/eeff86f87f2b3be9ae6915b8/w/c75821c5084576f01fba38b9/e/548ba7439931b031def3ac06

EvanReese

For starters, you initial sketch isn't right. The second hexagon's top point lines up with the right edge of the first, which isn't what you want.

You could pattern this in the sketch, but it can take more time to compute, and is hard to make parametrically flexible. A better way is a feature pattern. My Linear Pattern Plus feature can be helpful for things like this. Here's an example.

Isaac_W_Baer

Hi Voyager,

It looks like you have a vertical or coincident relation between a vertex in the lower hexagon, and the right, vertical side of the upper hexagon. If you remove this relation you might be able to figure out another one that would suit you better. try making the parallel distance between hexagon sides equal to twice the x distance between hexagon centers

wout_theelen541

Evan_Reese said:

For starters, you initial sketch isn't right. The second hexagon's top point lines up with the right edge of the first, which isn't what you want.

You could pattern this in the sketch, but it can take more time to compute, and is hard to make parametrically flexible. A better way is a feature pattern. My Linear Pattern Plus feature can be helpful for things like this. Here's an example.

Linear pattern plus is a fantastic tool, the OnShape community is in your debt. I am having trouble with one part though where I want to create some holes evenly over a board, the distance of the first hole from the start of the board and the distance from the last hole to the end of the board aren't equal though. I'll get it but I just need to play around with the settings I was wondering if it would be possible to add a mirror option so that all additional instances are evenly spaced between the seed and mirrored instance. The tool could then just measure the distance between theses instances and place all the other instances between this would solve my issue but additionally removes the chance for error where the user needs to input an offset for the seed feature and for the offset distance.

NeilCooke

Check out fill pattern. May do a better job for you. 

EvanReese

@wout_theelen541 Thanks! I don't exactly follow what you're running into or what you're after. Can you share an example?

wout_theelen541

Evan_Reese said:

@wout_theelen541 Thanks! I don't exactly follow what you're running into or what you're after. Can you share an example?

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/2164bf530679850eb203157b/w/464a96981ec38c2b83fcf760/e/f3bf68d6f46670e780ded304

@NeilCooke thanks for the advice. I tried fill pattern but it would require a lot of extra geometry calculations compared to just the offset for linear pattern plus. I'm sure I'll find another use case for it though.