Exhibition Design

james_kemp

I'm very new to onshape so apologies if this has an easy / obvious answer. I have several aluminium extrusions to use for an exhibition design but I can't get my head around a good work flow for this. Should I make the whole stand as a single part and not an assembly? I have to modify the lenghts of standard beams and need to keep fixed distances between them if I modify any parts of it. Is onshape geared up for this kind of work?

Ideally in the future I'll have pre-designed counters and display units that I can just modify the widths and heights on which is why I wanted to look at onshape as a tool for that. It looks like I can change sizes easily and have my drawing update with new sizes but I'm not certain how to do this at the moment. 

Any input appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

øyvind_kaurstad

It's a bit difficult to understand what you are wanting, but keep in mind that you can have many separate parts in a part studio, and those parts can build on each other, in essence like an assembly (fixed). This is often a good way to build something, since you model and assemble in one go, so to speak. You can also have variables (e.g for lengths), and then reference these variables when dimensioning your drawings and extrusions. If you later change the value of a variable, the change will be reflected wherever you used that variable.

Assemblies are most useful for movements, in other words when you have parts that are connected but moving in relation to each other.
If you provide more details about what you are going to create, then I'm sure you can get a more precise answer.

james_kemp

Thank you for getting back to me. Something like the attached is what I've been working on today. It's a standard door for a client of mine but I'd like to be able to modify the height and width and have the whole model update so I can get accurate dimensions.

I hope that makes more sense.

3dcad

@james_kemp
Your life will be much more easier after cross document references and configurations.

Currently I would suggest to dive into variables, part studio copying and derived parts.

james_kemp

james_kemp

Thanks Guys, looking forward to learning more

brucebartlett

Hi James, Great hear that your considering using Onshape. I m sure with a bit of planing you will be able to achieve a pretty good result and as future features come on board should only get easier.

For this kind of work I'd consider using variables in a Master Model to drive the basic shape, this could then be linked to all other parts in the document to gain a quick way to build new designs. Once you are happy with the documents state including all drawing, and assemblies, etc, save a version then branch from here for your different size variants.

Derived comes in very handy to get good document structure, depending on how large the project is I wouldn't fill the master model with too many bit, just the major component blocks, then start new part studios with a derive from the master and work from here.  

For your extruded profile's no easy way to link sketches so I wouldn't stress about parametric links, assuming the profiles will never change, once your happy with your shapes in a sketch you can copy by selecting the bits you want and RMB "copy sketch entities" then pasting in other sketches.

@DriesV has an excellent example here of how to structure a complete product off a master model see the 4th tab for the Master and 3rd with the derived part edits. https://cad.onshape.com/documents/23d0dc19ccb78c1fa408940b/w/324ea166dc50d77246c6d9f0/e/50e9b6c3db8cfb3a129248b3

@florian  has a neat little doc here of a box driven by variables https://cad.onshape.com/documents/343a8e986d3949eda17a2f1d/w/49e8acd910e749468db203a1/e/006f93fe5bed491ea5e123ff

Hope this help's

Bruce