Grid Extrude Custom Feature

Evan_Reese

I've just released a new custom feature called Grid Extrude (get the feature HERE).

It works like the normal extrude feature, but extrudes a network of shapes like this. I made it mostly to make networks of drafted ribs to reinforce plastic parts, but there are other uses too. You can watch the video tour HERE. Give it a go and let me know what you think!

MichaelPascoe

Yes!

billy2

This is an iso grid right? NASA's strongest structure. 

This is really nice, good job!

billy2

Darn!



Can you? They're a pain to construct manually. 

shawn_crocker

Another great one here!

glen_dewsbury

Sweet

David_YL_Nguyen

Cool feature!!!

NeilCooke

Reminds me of one I did 3 years ago   https://cad.onshape.com/documents/2f390754b9d0cbf7c2dc4128

Evan_Reese

@billy2
You can choose a triangle as the pattern, but it doesn't have the little holes at the nodes like the isogrid images I'm seeing

Evan_Reese

@NeilCooke
yes indeed. The closer you look the more it will remind you of it, because the bbox and transform math of your feature was the basis for handling the transforms. Thanks for making it and putting it out there.

billy2

@Evan_Reese this was really fast to construct and analyse. Your script allows easy changes to grid size & direction to maximise strength to weight. Thanks.

Evan_Reese

billy2 said:

@Evan_Reese this was really fast to construct and analyse. Your script allows easy changes to grid size & direction to maximise strength to weight. Thanks.

Yessss! I'd not thought to play with it this way, and I love it! If you wanna get even more flexible with it, you could configure it with variables so you can change it from the assembly

NewFatMike

billy2 said:

Darn!



Can you? They're a pain to construct manually. 

There is a public isogrid feature here, it's VERY cool!

Julia's Featurescripts | Isogrid (onshape.com)

Evan_Reese

yes! Thanks, @NewFatMike. I knew I'd seen one somewhere and forgot where. Julia has a bunch of good scripts.

Chris_D_Mentes_001

There's no place in my industry where I'd ever get to use this but God Damnit its fu*n cool!

billy2

Evan_Reese

V13 UPDATE:

I've been running into a number of bugs and limitations with this feature, as have others. I've re-worked a lot of it and I think it's much more usable now, and with better performance too.
Major changes are:

1. I totally re-worked how the grids are created. Now it creates a grid per input face, and the grid is much less over-built than previously, so it's more efficient. This improves performance, and also solves for some issues where the grid still didn't totally cover all of the faces, causing unpredictable behavior. This also means that certain odd cases don't impact performance the way they used to; for example, picking two faces far apart no longer produces a whole wasted grid between them.
2. Optional grid center point - Since the center location of the grid was somewhat arbitrary before, I've added the option to select any point or mate connector to position the center of the grid. This is made possible by the new grid logic. If a point is picked that isn't on the main plane, it will be projected onto it.
3. Optional grid direction - Similar to above, the direction can be somewhat arbitrary and unpredictable, so now a direction can be chosen. If a direction is picked that isn't perpendicular to the extrude direction, the closest direction is used anyway, giving a lot of flexibility about what can be selected as a direction.
   
4. Preview grid option which I'll personally use to make sure my setups are optimized well enough. Maybe other want this too.
   

bryan_lagrange

@Evan_Reese this would be cool to demonstrate at an upcoming user group meeting.

Evan_Reese

bryan_lagrange said:

@Evan_Reese this would be cool to demonstrate at an upcoming user group meeting.

I'm in. Let me know what you're thinkin'

bryan_lagrange

Thanks Evan. I am hoping to get more details by the end of the week/ weekend.