Best way to apply "feature" to linear pattern replicated part

Gabriele_Cannizzaro

Hi all, I'm trying to find the best (as in, most flexible and less time consuming) way to add a feature, in this case a mate connector, to many sides of my part. I have a rectangular "tile" replicated via linear pattern, to which I'm trying to add mate connectors (like a sort of dovetail) so the individual parts (say a 2x3 grid of tiles) can be printed and then locked together. I have created a prototype, but I'm now questioning:

1. Is there an easier way to "replicate" a sketch, or even better a "feature" (ie including extrude, fillets, etc) to many sides of the tile? So basically design the dovetail once and replicate it in different places, so if I need to modify it I don't need to change many sketches? At the moment all measures are set as variables, but still the design is copy/pasted.

2. Is there a better way to turn these on/off for various sides of the replicated (linear pattern) tiles? At the moment I'm playing with the order of the steps, then suppressing/unsuppressing as needed.

Thank you!

EvanReese

As always, annotated images and a link to your doc will get you better answers, but here goes.

Any of the pattern features have a "Feature pattern" mode and you can also set "Apply per instance" to get the features themselves to actually repeat themselves on a different part of the model. There's also a custom feature called Transform Pattern for doing this from one mate connector, to many other ones.

Another approach may be to model all of the geometry you're talking about as a separate part, then pattern that and set the pattern feature to "add" or whatever you need to get it to combine the right way.

Gabriele_Cannizzaro

Hi Evans, thank you for your reply! You're absolutely right, I should have attached some clearer information. I'll look into the things you mentioned, but just for clarity, here's the current state of things, and what I'm trying to achieve. I've simplified the tile, but basically I've sketched the shape of the connector, which makes up both the male and the female part according to what gets extruded/removed from the surface:



I've copy/pasted this onto the 4 sides of the tile, then with 4 extrudes and 1 fillet I can control which connectors are male/female and turn them "on" and "off" via suppress:



All the measures are variables, so I can control the size with those, all in all not a terrible way. Obviously, if I were to want to change the shape, say from the current dovetail style to a roundel, I'd have to edit all 4 sketches. I'll look into a way to model the connector as a separate part but I'm not sure how I could achieve the same result, ie how to combine the parts.

The other bit, the one about linear pattern replication, concerns the best way to "activate" these connectors on specific parts of the combined, replicated shape. At the moment, as I mentioned, I'm achieving this by carefully controlling the order of operations, suppressing the connectors I don't want, and having two separate linear replicators:



This is a bit cumbersome but works, and these being models I need to generate once and then print a bunch is not too bad, but I was wondering if there was a better / smarter way (I'll look into the tools you mentioned, Evans), especially since I also need to create some L-shaped patterns and that's probably going to be more complicated.

Gabriele_Cannizzaro

So, not sure if this is the best way possible, but it works and it's not too complicated... I've modeled each connector I need (male and female, left and right) on the main tile, in the position I need it in (I've decided to split and mate in the middle of the tile rather than the edge):

This essentially gives me every connector in the correct position relative to the main tile, as a separate part:

I've then used a combination of Transform (with Copy), Linear Pattern, Boolean and Delete to end up with the 3 tiles I need (no other parts) which can now be exported individually for 3D printing: