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Non-contiguous shapes in the same part?
stephen_sherwood846
Member Posts: 23 ✭
Is it possible to have a part that is made up of many objects that are non-contiguious?
For example, a ruler to be 3D printed with the ticks in a different colour. For you to be able to select a different filament the ruler and ticks need to be different parts of the same model. Onshape exports these fine but if the ticks on the ruler do not touch when extruding it creates a new part for each tick. On a recent model Onshape was getting painfully slow, and it was only then I relalized that I had over 900 parts, and had to go to painful lengths to "bury" pathways inside a model to connect up these non-contiguous items.
Comments
Yes, non-continguous parts can be contained in a composite part or an assembly.
But I don't know if either will solve your printing issue. On export, you can uncheck "Export unique parts as individual files" and you'll end up with just one part in your slicer program. Or if you check that box, you'll end up with lots of parts all sitting on top of each other.
I'd just create it as one part and then pause the print job after the ruler base has been printed and swap out filament.
It's less of an issue on the printing side - The slicer seems to be able to handle that, it's more that if you end up with 900 parts OnShape can take a couple of minutes for each operation which makes it unusable, hence looking for ways to reduce the part count. 900 parts joined to a composite shape still takes a long time.
The model is designed so that the parts in a different colour are embedded into the model - So I sketch on the surface, extrude into the model and then boolean remove that extrision so I end up with the flat surface.
If you share the document as a public document, I'm sure someone would have some ideas to make the document more manageable.