How to make a grid of thousands of millimeter holes

alexis_garnier767

Hello all,

I have been trying to make a greed of roughly 120mm by 60mm and punching it full of holes.

So I extructed a rectangle, and used repeating pattern to punch holes of 1mm size shaped like hexagons.

But repeating pattern just stops working after so many repetitions (as image shows it stopped after repeating the first two rows of the grid 8 times).

Is there a way to repeat this simple shape a thousand times or more to make a fine grid ?

Thanks in advance for your help

_anton

I'd just make one hole (though maybe two if they're hexagonal), then use the linear pattern feature (i.e., not in the sketch) to pattern the resulting faces.

(I should also drop the requisite cautionary note that modeling thousands of holes in parametric CAD should be avoided if at all possible.)

David_YL_Nguyen

Hey @alexis_garnier767,

I would also recommend to use "face pattern" instead of a feature pattern, that should result in better performance if you have a lot of instances.
You can check out this Tech Tip for more info: https://www.onshape.com/en/resource-center/tech-tips/tech-tip-how-to-create-faster-patterns-in-onshape

NeilCooke

Also take a look at the custom feature “fill pattern” (click on + menu, top right to find it). Probably the fastest method. 

Evan_Reese

I think @NeilCooke is right that Fill Pattern is the way to do this if you've gotta, and everyone here is right that you should NOT do this unless you've gotta. It's going to be slow no matter what.