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Joining large numbers of trivial "parts"?
ruth_ivimey_cook
Member Posts: 14 ✭
I am trying to create a model of a perfboard (a type of PCB with a regular grid of holes each of which has a solder ring). The model is simple enough, but Onshape is really struggling with the number of holes or parts created. The perfboard I am modelling has a grid of 33x54 holes, with some non-hole pads at each end. I am frequently getting hangs or even complete crashes of the app while manipulating the sketch, though once it is saved it does seem to settle down.
Edit: The current state is shown in https://cad.onshape.com/documents/c307ab50b79b13c08d72f9ad/w/087d9b266ed881c8a095dc8c/e/c9e946202355a4d53ba33984
The current issue is that I wanted to create the right appearance, so set the base fabric to "FR-4" in green (fibreglass) and then made the solder rings (all generated by one extrude in New mode) as "Solder", set to silvery colour. I don't need the parts to be "solder" as the material properties aren't important to me, but I do want the colour to change or the whole looks weird. Doing this creates ~1840 different Parts in my model, which is not useful!
What is the best way to deal with this?
To model perfboard properly, I would like to mirror the solder pattern from one side of the board to the other, but this would currently make the situation even worse.
Comments
Try not sketching every hole or part. Use feature/part arrays instead. This sample is notably faster until it is working with replicate. If still too slow on your system then switch replicate to linear array for the solder. The quantity of holes has a large affect on speed of document and even worse if all drawn in sketches.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/fb0040e75ad1913ecd329c67/w/ed8157b247a9f43a5bf4020a/e/f039b10ba646f868ee27990a
make less parts in the part studio and insert at assy.
I guess that making (configuring) the limited number of commercially available perfboard types would be a thing for FS.
I recently had to make a similar board, and because I also needed it for illustrational purposes, I just scanned a sample board I had in the drawer and then put the scanned image on the board as a decal. I still made the holes (needed for placing the components), but not the solder rings and pads.
Later I found that some suppliers even show pictures of their boards on their web sites, like this sample:
Just save and import … ;0)
Thanks for the suggestions.
Glen, while I do tend to sketch first and extrude later, in this case sketch first does mean I can easily centre the whole grid between the mounting hole centres using a constraint making the gap between (the first hole and nearest edge) and the (last hole and nearest edge) equal. Is there a good way to do that when using a feature array? [I guess I could do the sketch, do the constraints and then enforce the placement with dimensions, deleting the other constraints & sketch array, but that smells bad :-) ]
Martin, 100% marks for "cheating" :-)
What your suggesting will keep the over head up and speed down. You can use a centered array. The number of holes is still slowing down when having to process. Once processed in the array the speed comes up unless the array is changed.
This topic shows up regularly under perforated sheet.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/fb0040e75ad1913ecd329c67/w/ed8157b247a9f43a5bf4020a/e/38ee1157b873665375a886b6