How do I get the parallel distance between two mate connectors?

joshtargo

working on my first script.

evdistance is giving me the total distance between two mate connectors, but I want the parallel distance between them (or normal to the first one)

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/68cc6e7f44c7d45ead2a1b38/w/5c67626b11109a69231f9606/e/f5a54e138097299817bb6f7b

joshtargo

I may have fixed it by converting the two mate connectors into planes:

const dist is ValueWithUnits = evDistance(context, {

                "side0" : evPlane(context, {"face" : definition.start}),

                "side1" : evPlane(context, {"face" : definition.end})

        }).distance;

but let me know if there's an easier way!!

chadstoltzfus

Converting them to planes works fine, but you can also use extendSide0 and extendSide1 to just have evDistance convert the faces into planes. This can be nice if you're working with bodies in evDistance and don't want to find the specific face to make a plane, as extendSide will take all faces and extend them as if they were infinite.

const dist is ValueWithUnits = evDistance(context, {
         "side0" : definition.start,
         "side1" : definition.end,
         "extendSide0" : true,
         "extendSide1" : true
}).distance

Doc:
https://cad.onshape.com/FsDoc/library.html#evDistance-Context-map

joshtargo

chadstoltzfus said:

Converting them to planes works fine, but you can also use extendSide0 and extendSide1 to just have evDistance convert the faces into planes. This can be nice if you're working with bodies in evDistance and don't want to find the specific face to make a plane, as extendSide will take all faces and extend them as if they were infinite.

const dist is ValueWithUnits = evDistance(context, {
         "side0" : definition.start,
         "side1" : definition.end,
         "extendSide0" : true,
         "extendSide1" : true
}).distance

Doc:
https://cad.onshape.com/FsDoc/library.html#evDistance-Context-map

Thanks!

I also have another question.

I want the user to specify a direction by clicking a face or a line, but I don't know how to evaluate that to give me EITHER the line's vector or the face's normal vector, depending on what was picked.

chadstoltzfus

I think a solution was provided in another thread, where you can use extractDirection() and that will cover edge and face queries. 

But to talk a little bit about the query "type," there isn't a function like isQueryFace() or typechecks like that (at least none that I know of). You could make your own function library for this if you want to check this often. You can use qEntityFilter() to see if you can any results when filtering the query by a specific EntityType. 

Something like

export function isEntityType(context is Context, id is Id, entity is Query, entityType is EntityType)
{
      if(isQueryEmpty(context, qEntityFilter(entity, entityType)))
           return false;

      return true;
}

joshtargo

I think i solved it with another suggestion to use AllowsDirection and then they can only pick things where a direction can be extracted, but your example is good for me to learn from.