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Frame Trim Tube Notching
owen_stimpson
Member Posts: 1 PRO
I have started to use the frame tool more often for creating stairs and guardrails, but I have run into an issue with notching tubes. Previously I manually created tube parts through sketches and extrusions, which allowed me to design the correct notch type in tubing for our type of fabrication, but the frame function as far as i can tell does not have specifications on how tubes are trimmed. This is how we are required to notch tubes, for 2" tube we do a half inch deep notch:
And this is the frame trim notch:
The reasoning behind this issue stems from the excess material created by this deeper frame trim notch, and the notch itself during the coping process is not as clean as the manually created half in deep notch. Also this issue is difficult to fix due to the fact that the Cutlist feature calls for a longer length of tube for the part. Is there a way to sketch in an extra limit to the frame function or is the best course of action to manually change each frame part?
Comments
Assuming you're doing saw coping you can use move face before the frame trim and it'll do what you're looking for. The cutlist should update dimensions to respect the moved faces.
If you have a CNC laser or plasma you can use a ruled surface to trim the ends to be 90° to the tube to allow for the head to cut the geometry. Eventually I'd like to make this into a featurescript to automate the tube end treatments to make export to laser vendors easier.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/fe4bc2a895c9067c0c78a735/w/7351cbc3c1c059b78f61956d/e/b5ad36d17d544b40e8beada8?renderMode=0&uiState=6814dfa8d0a0fd432b66c1c2
Hi @owen_stimpson Im Josh, one of the Frames developers (although no longer at Onshape I still haunt the forums for fun). Frames doesn't have a great way to automatically customize end conditions as you've described. The most realistic option is to manually modify them. If you are new to Frames I want to remind you: Use frameTrim to modify frame segments. The reason is that the frame and frameTrim tools are "frame aware" so can add and edit face attribution that other tools (cutlist length and angle calculations) depend on.
One way to trim the ends is to create a trim tool using Frames. Here I use the Frame tool with a rectangular profile (2" x 1"). This is swept along the untrimmed segment path:
Then I do an ordered group frameTrim where "Group 1" is the trim tool, and Group 2 is the grey and dark blue segments needing trimming:
Then I just delete the trim tool part and have what I'm after.
When I create my custlist for the two trimmed parts, length information is correct and the untrimmed angle is still correctly identified as 0 degrees.
Josh you motivated me to add corner offset capabilities to the frame tool.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/b98e34b45c4cc416cb6cfdeb/w/b0a6cad47261bacee4933919/e/d5c075306bee738e14f7535d
My bad I forgot the corner override support. Got that in now too.
I'd love to modify the logic next to be able to do these intersection joints of more than 2 members meeting at some vertex in one single frame feature but I think that might introduce more literal corner cases to handle. Maybe painting some of the edges as primary and others as secondary would do the trick?
Hi @Derek_Van_Allen_BD nice work! I think corner offset/overrides look quite useful.
Points where >2 segments meet: This will (I believe) be hard to bake in to the frames tool itself. Most of the frames code assumes that there are never any 'branches' to paths so revisiting/undoing that fundamental assumption will be quite a bit of work. Adding it in after the fact will likely be a better bet. When I've made tools like this I've done them as a post-frames creation tool, eg, you've got 3 segments coming together (with no corner condition) and then apply a specific tool that trims 3 ends together nicely. You may have to make some geometric assumptions that won't hold in all possible cases but will hold in a large number of common cases (straight segments meeting at 90 degree angles, etc). But for custom-built tools such assumptions are just fine!
I love to see the improvements though! Keep at it!