Making Stackable Parts

knpwrs

Think of a shopping cart (or trolly, if you prefer). They are designed to fit together to save space during storage. Does Onshape provide any tools to assist with designing something like this, or do you just need to be smart with your dimensions?

I'm interested in designing a part that stacks in two dimensions. They will be shaped somewhat like a ∨. The first "stack" will be if one is rotated so you have two pieces as such: ∨ and ∧. From that orientation I want them to fit together. The second stack would be that you can then take these paired object and stack them two-by-two on top of each other.

3dcad

At first thought I might create part pattern as last line in feature tree so you can use final button to see how they fit together while editing the model.

And editing in context is just round a corner so after a while you can create assembly of multiple trollies and edit from there..

EvanReese

I'm not sure if I'm picturing your design correctly, but at least in thinking of a shopping cart, maybe the draft tool is a good choice (I'm also not sure of how familiar you are with CAD in general, so forgive me if that's too basic a suggestion). Here's an example of how the addition of draft can allow for stacking. Imagine making a stack of buckets. If the side walls had no taper (draft) then they wouldn't fit inside each other. Here's a link to this example document too. You actually don't need the "draft" feature there since the extrude feature has it built in. Am I on the right track here?

knpwrs

Evan_Reese said:

I'm also not sure of how familiar you are with CAD in general, so forgive me if that's too basic a suggestion).

Nothing is too basic! My only "CAD" experience prior to onshape is a wee bit of sketchup. I'm getting into 3D printing and I wanted to fabricate my own parts.

I've also decided that my "two-dimensional stacking" is way more complicated than it needs to be so I'm just going to focus on stacking in one dimension for now. Thanks for the sample document, I'll definitely take a look!

EvanReese

@knpwrs
If you get stuck somewhere, feel free to share your document and I can try to help. Also, the Onshape staff are very active on the forums from what I've seen so you should get a good response if you ask a good question. Good luck!