imported geometry

billy2

In keeping with my contract with Onshape I'm building my light. My thought was to use geometry from SW as the basis for my design. May not be a good idea.

An old question we asked in our training classes "What's the most complicated parametric feature?" is valid in this model. The first one.

I'm trying to match the old SW design intent. I created this original model so I know what my intent is, but you can easily see on inspection of the geometry that the origin is located at the focal point of the LED. This is important to the design and I want to retain this design intent in my new model.

The problem is that my light now faces up or 'top' and I want it to face 'front'. I could spin it in SW, but that wouldn't be right, I need to do this in OS.

ISO in SW:


ISO in OS:


Even though OS doesn't show a triad, Z is now up in a OS iso. It's important to note that the geometry isn't translating during the import, the views are different in the two systems.

So what I'm looking for is a move body command, and I can't find one.

I was thinking of using a rotational pattern and then deleting the seed. I don't feel like messing with patterns.

I decided on using the assy, even though I'm trying to avoid this. It would be nice to mate it a different plane in the assy but wait, assy's don't have any planes.

To by-pass this issue I create a block that I'll use to flip my geometry.

I made the sides of the rectangle equal, now it's a square which should allow me to properly flip the geometry in the assy.

I tried to make a reference to the face of the light but couldn't. Like SW, I guess face references in sketch won't happen.


I grouped the bodies in the assy so I wouldn't have to multi-select them any more and moved them using a planar mate connector.


I don't want all this crap in my model so I'm going send the geometry through parasolids to strip out all the parametrics. First I suppress the mate and then delete the block. Now, save as a parasolids file.


I imported the geometry into light layout3 and realized that I'm using old fashion file system techniques to manage my progress. I never want to get back to these steps so I think I'm correct in not using OS versioning.


Now I have parts vs. bodies in my document, not sure why that changed and I lost my appearance & renaming.

Oh well, at least I've got my geometry oriented correctly and it should be downhill from here.

joe_dunne

OK

I am with you on the import orientation issue... Trust me..... SolidWorks actually caused the problem in the first place. I remember this topic caused heated arguments back in 95... And well fast forward and same issue and same heating arguments occur in 2014

In a perfect world, our current orientation is the way all products should be doing it. But we obviously have a lot of data coming in from SolidWorks. So it was a tough decision which way to go.

We plan to address this, likely with an option of allowing you to adjust z direction on import... Maybe we can auto detect where the data is coming from and get the default orientation right.... this is planned.

In addition, there is a way to rotate the imported model using Move face today. It actually works well. the catch is we don't have a easy way to select all the faces of a body... So you have to use manual selection to make sure you get all the faces, ( or use the Create Selection helper).

Suffice to say I will list this as a enhancement request... Somehow, Onshape needs to match Solidworks orientation on SolidWorks imported data.

and we need a rotate/move body command too.

Joe

billy2

Didn't think of the move face(s). I'll look at it.

I was thinking of a check box that rotates about X 90 degrees on import.

Maybe a checkbox "Reorient SW Part" which rotates geometry by 90 degrees.

Good news it's always going to be rotate X 90 degrees. Hell I could write that little piece of code and sell it in the Onshape App Store, one dollar ($1). Where's the API Joe?

caradon

jdunne said:

Somehow, Onshape needs to match Solidworks orientation on SolidWorks imported data.

Or:
Specify "up" axis as x, y or z upon uploading. This is the way KeyShot allows to set the orientation in the import settings.

Dries

scott_harris

In the mean time... you can use the Move Face function and use the "create selection" on RMB, picking Protrusion and a face on a body often gets you the entire body... if not.. keep picking until you have all of the faces. You can then re-orient your body. It's ugly and you may need to repeat it for complex re-orientations but for now it seems to work. We will work on allowing the user to set orientation in the import case as well as making re-orientation easier.

billy2

Turns out that flipping geometry is a nightmare. It would have been worth $1 to buy a rotate X app. Moving faces might be easier. I did get it to work after chasing down all the little gotcha issues.

I started my first feature from imported flipped geometry and noticed things weren't lining up. The centered sketch rectangle wasn't lining up on the edge of the body.



So I went back to the light2 to find the error. Turns out a plane mate connector was wrong and should have been a fastened connector.




Turns out it was still wrong. Don't trust auto-mate connectors. I'm not sure how it computes the center of an area, but in my case it wasn't in the center.




Zoomed in you can see the origin and the auto-mate center. I guess it's right and I'm wrong, but I'll be careful selecting centers of areas in the future.



To get around this problem I created my own mate-connector.



10 hours later and I ready to get started.




I don't mean to sound so negative, I really like working in onshape, it's fast, enjoyable. I just which I knew it and all the little gotcha things that could go wrong.

I did get the assembly flip to work. I'm going to try using move faces next and compare which is easier.

joe_dunne

Bottom line we need to address this. It is my #1 pet peeve right now. Feels like an unforced error. Lets see the vast majority of our data is coming in from SolidWorks. So lets flip it.

But like I said we had to pick a default behavior. We as a group were split pretty much down the middle. And you can tell what camp I was in.... the losing one

Anyway I for one am be pushing hard to get this addressed sooner than later. Since there are many solutions. But we had to start somewhere.

Joe

kevin_quigley

Add my name to the "get this sorted now before you do anything else" list! Guys, this is core functionality. If you are intending to convert SolidWorks users or even make SolidWorks users consider OnShape as an extra system in a multi cad environment you need to be able to open the native file format without any issues. This is key to the strategies of virtually all the big players now - PTC, Siemens, Autodesk, hell even Rhino opens SW files natively intact.

Can't be that hard to do surely?