Modeling really small parts

whtmountain

An awful lot of the modeling I currently do involves parts that fit into a very small spaces...usually on the order of being less than 25x25x25 (mm).

The zoom, pan, and scan seem to have issue working that small, either the tracking distance is much degraded or small mouse movements zoom the workspace right off the screen.  Is there a mode I'm missing for modeling at that small of a scale?  Some default I can change or modify that will scale better?

philip_thomas

Yup - please submit a ticket for this issue (exactly as you describe above).
Suggestions - would it help to model at 10x scale and then as a final feature scale everything 1:10?
(or model in inches 1mm = 1in). You get the idea.
The limitations you are encountering are just our best guesses as what the limits of zoom should be - we can do better.
Thank you for your support of Onshape

philip_thomas

Jonathon - i have seen this for various reasons in several cad systems. A multi national contact lens maker does exactly this. They used 1:10 (1mm = 1cm). They carried this all the way through to the drawings. At export they scaled the body down. You can do this in Onshape using the 'Transform' feature (it will be the last feature in your feature list and probably suppressed most of the time)

philip_thomas

Yup - please submit a ticket for this issue (exactly as you describe above).
Suggestions - would it help to model at 10x scale and then as a final feature scale everything 1:10?
(or model in inches 1mm = 1in). You get the idea.
The limitations you are encountering are just our best guesses as what the limits of zoom should be - we can do better.
Thank you for your support of Onshape

whtmountain

That's logical.  I'll have to figure out how to set the scale like you suggest and have it stick when I export to STEP.

Thanks for the explanation on this one.

philip_thomas

Jonathon - i have seen this for various reasons in several cad systems. A multi national contact lens maker does exactly this. They used 1:10 (1mm = 1cm). They carried this all the way through to the drawings. At export they scaled the body down. You can do this in Onshape using the 'Transform' feature (it will be the last feature in your feature list and probably suppressed most of the time)