Making a single part with unique features

mike_pearson

Hello,
I've been using Onshape on and off for a couple months now. I'm liking it but feel I'm missing a couple things in regards to part management "best practices".

I mainly draw electronic components, so I'll use that as an example. A simple example is an LED. It has a plastic body with two metal leads coming out of it. I can extrude the plastic body and give it it's correct appearance. As far as I can tell, if I want to extrude the leads with their own relevant appearance, they have to be separate parts within that studio.When I'm all done I end up with 3 parts when it's really only one LED. This makes managing it in an assembly a bit crazy because all of the individual details show up as their own parts.

The only way I've found around the above scenario is adding it to it's own assembly and using the Group function to fix all the components together. Then I can add that assembly to the main assembly. Am I understanding that correctly? I want to develop efficient methods for managing components.

Another piece of advice I'd be grateful for. If I want to have some common components, we'll say hardware, for example. What is the best way to organize these in Onshape? Should I collect them in a document and have the individual screws and nuts in their own part studio?

Thanks for reading,
Mike

_Ðave_

Hi Mike

 It appears to me that everyone is waiting for Onshape to resolve some issues before spending/wasting time try to develop a workflow for both of these issues. It's been suggested that Onshape is either working on or is planning to work on being able to change colors of different faces on a single part. It's also been suggested the same with parts library.

 Both of your suggestions seam it me to be a fair solution for the present.

_Dave_

3dcad

@mike_pearson
You could try to derive metal parts into plastic body. You would end up with 2 part studios, one with complete led and one with metal parts - led would be a single part in assembly.

For positioning (metal pieces into plastic), use mate connectors and after deriving use translate by mate connectors. 

3dcad

Like this: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/d29ff8e74a0f49809e533f48/w/48fedb2064cc4f30a27ee6e8/e/c440629ab88c393bd8d1a89a

You can avoid the need for transforming by creating things in correct place relative to origin (when possible).

_Ðave_

Hi Mike

 It appears to me that everyone is waiting for Onshape to resolve some issues before spending/wasting time try to develop a workflow for both of these issues. It's been suggested that Onshape is either working on or is planning to work on being able to change colors of different faces on a single part. It's also been suggested the same with parts library.

 Both of your suggestions seam it me to be a fair solution for the present.

_Dave_

mike_pearson

Thanks for the reassurance Dave.

3dcad

@mike_pearson
You could try to derive metal parts into plastic body. You would end up with 2 part studios, one with complete led and one with metal parts - led would be a single part in assembly.

For positioning (metal pieces into plastic), use mate connectors and after deriving use translate by mate connectors. 

3dcad

Like this: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/d29ff8e74a0f49809e533f48/w/48fedb2064cc4f30a27ee6e8/e/c440629ab88c393bd8d1a89a

You can avoid the need for transforming by creating things in correct place relative to origin (when possible).

mike_pearson

@3dcadThank you. I didn't think to use mate connectors in this fashion, but it makes sense.

3dcad

Derive is powerful feature when creating 'assemblies' that are actually a single component.

ps. I meant transforming of mate connectors in above comments, sorry for typos

tom_scarince

Another workflow that benefits from individually colored features/faces is machined castings.  In Inventor, we've created a part representing the raw casting and derived it into a new part file.  Then we set the default color for all new features to something obvious like red.  Now, every new surface created by "machining" features stands out in color and anything that doesn't "clean-up" can be easily seen. 

milan_jovanovic

I tried making a second part in Part Studio 2, and then deriving it into the original part in Part Studio 1. It seems to me that deriving makes two parts (normally of different materials) occupy the same space. I have the following problems with that:
- Incorrect volume/mass for parts.
- When these two parts share an outer surface (flush), that surface is not displayed correctly (mixing colors).
- If a derived part has a hole in it, then it will be filled with the original part material.
- Generally not a correct model.

I am trying to model parts made by casting of polymer/plastic over metal inserts. This way the polymer fills all the volume in the mould that is not occupied by metal inserts. I need to know the correct volume/mass of each part.

Currently I do it this way: make original part (polymer), remove parts of it to make a cavity for metal insert, make metal part in another Part Studio, and finally derive it into the prepared cavity of the original part. This is really nuts - you have to do identical construction of metal part twice (first for the cavity, then for metal itself).

Is there a better way to do this in Onshape? Or can derive somehow subtract from the original part (where it puts the derived part)?