Custom Feature: Amalgam Tag and Amalgamate

romeograham

@EvanReese The Not-Hole workflow is very cool. However, thread info from a tapped hole is not propagating through to Sheet Metal target parts using the Amalgamated Not-Hole method (but the native Hole feature does apply threads to sheet metal parts). Is this something that can be fixed? Or might we be doing something wrong?

Thanks again you guys for the amazing work and service to this community!

EvanReese

Thanks for trying it out, Romeo. The native hole feature does this through a totally different logic pathway than opBoolean. To get this working the change would have to be on the Amalgamate side by looking for things with hole attributes and sending those down a different hole creation pipeline, which sounds like a slog but doable.

EvanReese

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/127769#Comment_127769

I get ya. Think on it though. I know I can configure a delete body or not making the union body at all, but I have a feeling that I'll be doing that on every single setup I ever make. I'd prefer to only have to do that on setups that have various union bodies (i.e. one for injection molded parts, and another for a CNC part). Either way, respect for thinking it through and being mindful of scope creep and second order effects.

wille_j

I just thought of a really neat thing; it's possible to name the Amalgamate feature in the tree based on the source data.

The tag feature would need to have to have an optional 'Name' string field, and the parts can then be named 'Name' + Union, Subtract, and New, (1,2,3 … if there are multiple). While all parts also get an attribute that the Amalgamate can getAttribute from and name the feature in the feature list from! Makes keeping track of multiple Amalgamate features in a target document much cleaner automatically.

Derek_Van_Allen_BD

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/127877#Comment_127877

Latest build of Amalgamate does have computed property naming built in, though I chose not to bake the name into the tool bodies because we already don't have a one size fits all naming convention internally at Boss so I didn't want to force one unilaterally on everyone else using the feature. The field is just a string in the Amalgam Tag feature that can be driven via expressions to get names to change dynamically by configurations.

wille_j

Ah nice! Sorry that I wasn't paying attention to the latest builds, happy you got to the same conclusion!

Totally fair to not name the parts, most likely they are going to be either union to or subtract from something else, so the name is not really sticking anyway.

Thanks for an awesome feature!

Daniel_Gratiot

Great feature! However, I ran into something that may be a bug or limitation. Trying to set up a company logo as an AM feature. We often use the logo in 3D printing, and text and these types of objects are difficult in Onshape, so it would be really powerful to be able to drop it into a part and automatically create the negative and positive letters. Since the logo is made up of 8 letters, I usually turn it into a closed composite part to simplify the model to one composite part. I made a copy in place of that as the negative to remove. When trying to apply the AT tags, it would not accept the composite negative copy or positive composite in the tag panel for subtraction. However, it would accept that as the part to add.

Is this a bug or known limitation? If not, any chance of an update? Thanks!

Derek_Van_Allen_BD

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/128861#Comment_128861

I think I recall making this choice consciously due to the potential for closed composites to include surface geometry or other invalid queries for a subtractive operation, but I suppose I could allow the selection and throw a warning that the Boolean will skip the invalid geometry. At the time the people asking for composite support were using ugly import parts as their examples of what they wanted to insert and I figured insertion would be fine for those cases but I definitely didn't want to hear from them when they tried to subtract a surface from a solid. I'll try to work an update in this weekend.

Daniel_Gratiot

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/128862#Comment_128862

"ugly import parts" LOL – completely understand the rationale! But a warning should do the trick and allow appropriate use.
Would it retain all the parts in a closed composite if it were "opened" after creation? Just thinking about worst case, or possible editing scenarios. Would it simply break until closed again?
Thanks for the fast response!

eric_pesty

@Derek_Van_Allen_BD,

I just ran into an interesting situation where I was amalgamating something to an existing part but realize I would rather do the amalgam feature first and create geometry around the new bodies after… I don't have any unioning bodies in the tag but didn't have anything selected there but it errors out without a subtraction scope.

I know I could use a regular derive for that but I already have an amalgam feature that I would have liked to keep as i have multiple locations. Is there any reason you can't have more flexibility in the amalgam feature where you could have the option to not have a subtraction scope (i.e. ignore the subtraction body in the tag)? And probably also have the option to create the union bodies as new. Maybe something like a "ignore scope" checkbox?

Derek_Van_Allen_BD

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/128919#Comment_128919

People on my team have asked me for something like what you suggest, and my hesitance to allowing users to skip scope selection was that it opens the door to a feature "successfully" building while the user just forgot to select a really important subtraction step and now we've got parts hitting the mill with interferences due to negligence. Essentially I didn't want Amalgamate's greatest strength of enforcing geometric consistency across an entire company database to become its greatest weakness by requiring model reviewers (usually me) to drill down into each Amalgamate application and making sure that scopes were specified. This does mean those team members have found clever workarounds to create explicit configurations that only include a union scope or subtraction scope for example, or they use some other Point Derive feature to apply so you can argue that the limitation doesn't really serve that goal but that was the rationale, and at least for me I think the efforts they're applying to work around the restriction is forcing them to consider their amalgam geometry more carefully to ensure that it really does apply to all cases they're inserting it.

Certainly I could see arguments in favor of a checkbox that tweaks the Amalgam behavior, I would just want to sit down and consider all possible implications of adding it before it causes me a headache on the floor.

eric_pesty

@Derek_Van_Allen_BD ,

That makes sense, I just wanted to share a specific use case where doing what I described would have been the "nicest"!
I thought about doing a configuration but I ended up just using a regular derive with just the "new" bodies but this might come up again for this specific awkwardly shaped thing that I might have to sometimes jam into existing geometry and sometimes have the option to create new geometry to match it.

It's a bit of an edge case for sure, the amalgamate features have been super useful for what I've been doing lately!

Derek_Van_Allen_BD

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/128945#Comment_128945

Any cool examples to share? It's always nice to see how other people make use of the tools I develop.

eric_pesty

ostly boring stuff and fairly proprietary. I'm designing a "family" of test fixtures and having to add cutouts in various places, some with tapped holes, etc… Having each one be just one feature and knowing for sure they all match is really nice!

Here's a sample feature tree (I'm also using dynamic suppression controlled by variables to toggle things on and off) :

And this is where my example use case came from:

3D printed barcode reading camera bkt that I am incorporating in different places. The feature for square nuts used to provide adjustment would be especially painful to re-create over and over!

And here's an example of it in use:

Daniel_Gratiot

@Derek_Van_Allen_BD I see there has been an update that includes composite parts. Yay! Forgive me if I am missing where a read me for a change log is - may be a missing feature in feature script.

I tried my logo example again, and while I can choose a composite part as the part to insert, I cannot choose a composite as the union or subtraction object. Is there an intentional limitation? To be clear about the example, if there are 4 letter objects, e.g LOGO, and they are combined into a composite to keep, then transform to copy in place as the object to remove, one should be able to select one composite to remove, and the other to add. In my test, I could not select a composite for union or subtraction, only parts to insert new. So in your example, make a first composite before the transform for removal, and a second to add.

Also, the reason to make the first closed composite is to clean up the part tree, and also allow easy application of appearances to multiple bodies.
Thanks for the improvements!

Derek_Van_Allen_BD

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/129716#Comment_129716

There was some intention behind limiting that, yes. When I added the composite support for insertion I could have added it as well to the union and subtraction steps, but the examples I was working from were composite parts born from ugly import geometry containing surface geometry and curves which would have failed the boolean operation downstream. I could probably allow the composite selection if I add some guarding to that specific kind of case but at the time it was easier to direct my team by telling them no, you can't use composites as tools because it will make all of our work harder.

jelte_steur_info

Hey Derek,
some user feedback here:
I've found amalgamate very useful. One of the applications I use it for is for logo's on products. I've got them in configured size and thickness and add/subtract them from a molded part.

in the amalgamate tag option, i have to choose though between parts to add/remove/new. Is there a way to make the amalgamate feature such that i could choose the same parts for add/remove/add as new and have the amalgamate feature only add/subtract if a part is in scope there?

or should I add a configuration to my tagged logo Part studio and configure the amalgamate tag feature to work for subtraction/addition/new that way?

EvanReese

@jelte_steur_info I've needed similar things. One approach Derek could take is to add an enum in Amalgamate for a different mode set to remember previous value. That way people who use it most as it is now can keep doing so, but people who need different behavior can make that their default. If not I may get around to making my own version with a few tweaks but still use the same amalgam tag feature so either tool could be used. For example, I've run into times where I wanted the feature to allow non-selection of subtraction bodies or union bodies for similar reasons to what you're describing. In fact I think there's a lot of room for more features in the amalgamate ecosystem. It would be a good way to make a Company Logo feature that handles the instantiation from the tagged studio so no one ever has to navigate to it, and it could enforce a bit more standardization via a drop-down of sizes or depths etc.

jelte_steur_info

@EvanReese: A company logo feature (or version of amalgamate) could also have a debug body, only visible when the feature is active, that shows the preferred clear space around the logo!

@Derek: at the moment I've implemented this and it works just fine, but having to do this for every tag would be a bit cumbersome perhaps. (composite version is for legacy use).

EvanReese

Love the idea of a logo margin

S1mon

When I just had derive (and super derive) to work with, I modeled a logo "tool" with margin like this: