Linear pattern along helix

jerome_goyet

Good day, 

Is there a way to create a linear pattern along an helix (see attached picture : I want to create a series of holes along the helix)  ? I used the linear pattern function but i'm not able to select the helix as the pattern direction.
Any hint ?
Tks
Jérôme

NeilCooke

What you really need is Curve Driven Pattern, which I'm sure will be available at some point in the future. If it's something you do regularly, please submit an enhancement request through the feedback tool (top right) - the more people ask for it, the higher priority it will get.

NeilCooke

If you know the angle of the helix and the angle between each instance you can calculate by how much the hole will move down with each instance. You can then use variables in your feature pattern to achieve this. Note that you have to include the sketch in the pattern to achieve this and sketches are not yet fully supported in feature patterns (sketches cannot have external references so the point I dimension from has been fixed. Also sketches created from patterns cannot be hidden, but if you use the part in an assembly they will disappear. These limitations will be addressed soon).

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/ff7c2a3e98c6f814782ba055/w/62c8265dc4b05e0c9bde6148/e/49c09611fc1156e9dc451748

jerome_goyet

Tks very much for the quick reply, do you plan to simplify the whole process ?

NeilCooke

What you really need is Curve Driven Pattern, which I'm sure will be available at some point in the future. If it's something you do regularly, please submit an enhancement request through the feedback tool (top right) - the more people ask for it, the higher priority it will get.

øyvind_kaurstad

@NeilCooke In your answer you mentioned that "These limitations will be addressed soon.". Is it possible to expand a little on that?

While Onshape is getting better and better with more and more features, I have a feeling that your main focus is to add new features, and not fixing annoyances (both minor and big ones). I do love getting new features, but I'd really wish for you to go through the backlog of annoyances and do some housekeeping on that, too.

NeilCooke

@øyvind_kaurstad - limitations are: external refs in sketches and hiding patterned sketches. We were going to hold back feature pattern until these were addressed, but decided to release it so that those users who do not need to pattern sketches can make use of the new pattern type. Should we have waited?

For annoyances - these are subjective and annoy some more than others. I am sure that most users would like more functionality right now, but the enhancement priority system is based on customer votes. Please make sure you submit your annoyances through the feedback tool.

øyvind_kaurstad

My annoyances are already in the system, rest assured. :-)

One of them, which may or may not be related to this, is the current inability to hide a derived sketch (or helix). I really can't understand how on earth this feature could be introduced without the ability to hide the derived sketch. In practice, it makes the derived sketch feature more or less unuseable, since it just clutters the view. This is just a fundamental flaw that should have been addressed before releasing the functionality.

I actually can't find this in the "Improvement Requests" category, but it has been mentioned in the forums, and I think it has been said that it will be fixed.

NeilCooke

OK let's see if we can get this fixed for you @øyvind_kaurstad

øyvind_kaurstad

@NeilCooke That would be great :-) If you could please also do something about the tesselation issue as well, then I'd be even happier. Having your model go from looking great to suddenly look crap isn't a good feature (happened to me with the latest Onshape update). I do understand that at some point a model can grow so complex that rendering might suffer, but in the current version this doesn't seem to be dynamic. If Onshape decides to start rendering your model coarsely, then that's how it stays (at least until there is something changed server-side, cache wipe/refresh or whatever).You can argue that it is just a visual issue, but I think visual issues are quite important, and having a finely rendered model does help when working on it, giving better visual cues. And when it doesn't look good, working on it is just less fun.

timotheus

@NeilCooke Is there any timeline for the release of a Curve Driven Pattern feature? Would really love it!