Feature mirroring

Erich_Koch

Placed a feature in a part, and tried to mirror it with respect to a plane.
Result: "Failed to create face pattern, check input", regardless of what sequence I try to get it done.
I have done:1) Mirror command, 2) pick elements, 3) pick mirror plane
Can't figure out what step I am missing out not doing correctly.
Thanks.

øyvind_kaurstad

Judging from just your picture, it might seem that the faces you want to mirror are so far from the mirror plane that they will (partly) miss the part on the other side, causing the operation to fail.

Erich_Koch

The Part was made at the origin. I mean the Right Plane (mirror) is in the middle of the part, therefore the feature I am trying to mirror would be at the same distance on the opposite side of the board. Thanks for looking into this.

_Ðave_

Please attach a link and I'll give it a try.

Erich_Koch

Here is more graphical information of what I am trying to do.

øyvind_kaurstad

Interesting. I recreated what your drawing shows, and I get the same thing. The face mirror doesn't want to work. I'd suggest that you'd work around this by creating an object (a separate part) that you can use to subtract that shape from your main object, and then mirror that part before doing the subtraction.

Here's my public document:
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/c20d43a797e02b27f87429a0/w/12982f5f1e077dd9ed355c4a

One tab with the failed face mirror (as you have), and one tab with the workaround method I described.

øyvind_kaurstad

One more thing, it turns out that it is possible to use a linear pattern to pattern the faces along that edge, so I think this might actually be a bug in Onshape. It should have been able to mirror those faces also.

_Ðave_

In absence of a link I've also recreated the model and have concluded the same as oyvind_Kaursted.

Erich_Koch

This is getting very interesting. I just opened the file in my iPad Pro that oyvind_Kaursted made and the part is very dark gray, almost black. It can't be rotated, zoomed, nothing. I can't change the color or material, etc. Is basically inactive. I can't do anything with the parts in either tab. By the way, this is not the first time that this happened to me while using the iPad Pro. It did not happen with the iPad Mini, nor the iPhone 6. Looks like the program has a bug, and by the way the iPad Pro is handling it is also buggy.
Thanks you all for looking into this. I will have to use a different method to do this project.
 

3dcad

If your cutted shape is symmetric ie. if it's possible to use pattern instead of mirror, I would suggest to try the new 'feature pattern' we just just got in last update.. with variables you can easily make position symmetric to original 

øyvind_kaurstad

As I wrote, the faces can be patterned, but I still see this as a bug that Onshape should look into.

_Ðave_

@Øyvind +1 on the bug

NeilCooke

@Erich_Koch Onshape is not supported on mobile browsers such as Chrome or Safari on iPad (there is a big red warning sign on the login page). Please go to the Apple App Store and download the Onshape app - mobile browsers do not support WebGL. 

øyvind_kaurstad

@NeilCooke But nevertheless there seems to be a bug there. I only work on a desktop browser, and mirroring that face pattern doesn't work, even if the same faces can be linearly patterned.

NeilCooke

Without doubt, so please make sure it is reported through the feedback tool. In the meantime either model half the part and mirror, or mirror the whole part with the intersect option.

Erich_Koch

@NeilCooke, @oyvind_kaurstad.
I am using the OnShape App posted in the App Store in my iPad Mini, iPad Pro and iPhone 6. I am just fascinated by the fact that I can create a 3D part and assembly in those devices. Otherwise, if I HAVE TO USE A COMPUTER, then I have access to IronCAD, Inventor, Pro-E and SolidWorks, and the data is in my device.
However, by playing around here I am beginning to see the benefits of the Cloud "Stuph". Very interesting.
Erich Koch (dms-cad.com)

brucebartlett

To be honest I've given up using the face mirror, not sure if it's a bug or my lack of understanding of the command. I would have thought the face  mirror should have worked in this situation and if I had confidence that would be my go to command but I seem to find that modelling half the part then mirror and boolean is more reliable but not always practical.

Face mirror in lieu of a "Mirror Feature" just doesn't seem to cut it. literally.

NeilCooke

@Erich_Koch glad you are enjoying full-cloud CAD. Sure, we don't have the features that the other 20 year old CAD systems have, but we're working as fast as we can to address that. Your image showed Chrome on iPad - if you click a link in the forum to a public doc it will go to a browser not the app. 

3dcad

NeilCooke said:

Without doubt, so please make sure it is reported through the feedback tool. In the meantime either model half the part and mirror, or mirror the whole part with the intersect option.

Do you mean that you will ignore the bug if we (users) don't create a ticket for it?

With all respect, please don't ask us to formally report bugs. It should be more than enough to report them in forum especially if we see that there is someone with 'Onshape employees' -status following the discussion. 

NeilCooke

Bugs are never ignored - logging a bug through the feedback tool ensures that it is in the system and is not reliant on another person to interpret the issue and to remember to log it on Monday. 

øyvind_kaurstad

To all: I submitted this bug via the feedback tool now, so we know it will be properly logged.

NeilCooke

Thank you @øyvind_kaurstad - only by measuring "customer hits" can we determine how serious a bug is to the community. Clearly this is a very noticeable bug, but there are also workarounds. The more people complain (through the feedback tool), the faster things will get fixed. 

chrisjh777

As far as I am aware, mirroring features in Onshape is currently not possible.  I reported this in June 2015 here:

 https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/1064/how-do-i-mirror-this-feature#latest

I got the impression that only mirroring sketches was possible and an IR was raised back then.  If someone could confirm that the IR was not raised, I would be happy to raise an new IR.

NeilCooke

@chrisjh777  you are correct but hopefully this situation will be resolved soon. 

3dcad

@NeilCooke
I think you need some improvement on these tools, Onshape employee should be able to create a group ticket for all of us when sees a discussion like this. It is not convenient to expect that everybody who needs proper face mirror will 'complain' about it using feedback tool.

I'm not complaining, for me the feedback tool is one of the most used tools But this is not the case with everyone and that might give you the false impression that some minor bug doesn't need urgent fix even though people might be hitting 'Vote up' to bug report comment in forum with tears on they eyes hoping for quick fix. 

Erich_Koch

I did create another feature at the other end. But I needed to keep looking at the first feature to get the dims. Is there a way to label each dimension, say d1=0.25, d2=0.375, d3, etc so later I can reference d2 and not have to go and look at what d2 is?
Sorry about this kind of question, but I just found this program about a week ago.
(A friend that uses IronCAD was fascinated that I created two parts and constrained them, all in the iPhone 6)

3dcad

@Erich_Koch
You can create variable before sketch: groove_length=50 and use it in sketch #groove_length (or #groove_length-50*12/6 + #another_var)

NeilCooke

@3dcad I totally understand, I really do. Of course I can log bugs, but without a username attached to it, it gets a lower priority. The same bug with many actual usernames listed gets a higher priority. 

Erich_Koch

@3dcad Thanks a lot for the information.
Where can I go to read more about that particular subject? And if that information is done before the sketch, where does one store that information for later retrieval?
Thanks a lot.

3dcad

@Erich_Koch
https://cad.onshape.com/help/#variable.htm?Highlight=variable

Onshape has very good online help site, which is also accessible from each tool using small ? in feature dialogs.

Variables are stored in feature list (in user POV).  

henry_feldman

NeilCooke said:

@3dcad I totally understand, I really do. Of course I can log bugs, but without a username attached to it, it gets a lower priority. The same bug with many actual usernames listed gets a higher priority. 

The other feature which is important to logging the bug yourself, is that you can share the file with support which then allows them to more quickly dive into the problem. This allows the dev to open your file in dev mode with a debugger and see what the issue is more quickly. 

That being said, the folks from OS monitoring the forum should be able to set priority based on number of forum entries. I mean if 200 people were on this discussion complaining, that should be raised high, even if one person logs it. We have such a feature in our bug tracking system, where some bugs are rated critical due to their nature (user pressed button and a cute puppy died) while others are because they see tons of users complaining, just not to support. We recently had an internal issue like this, where our outlook web client would quit (desktop worked fine) randomly after 10-20 seconds of logging in. I came onto the hospital ward and everyone was complaining, but nobody called the help desk (who out of 18000 employees had gotten 2 calls - so they thought it was those users); luckily as someone who also has an attachment to IT I managed to get the report to state "every user on this ward and 2 others where I work has experienced this". The support person raised this from low-priority individual report to critical, and it turned out to be of course a huge network problem that nobody knew about.