3D Sketch custom feature

bryce_hruska

I am trying to make a quick feature to make it easier to layout 3d piping in a new section of our facility. It is kind of a work around for 3d sketching. I will call the new feature Quick Plane (QP)

 Input

Vertex at the end of a line

 Output

Point normal Plane using that vertex and the line touching it

A sketch on the new plane with a point on the selected vertex

It would be nice if clicking the green check box to close the feature would leave the user at the opened sketch to start drawing.

It would be awesome if it had the sketch open and a line with one point already on that vertex and the other point waiting for the user to select.

 Summary

This feature would save a lot of clicks to layout isometric piping. It would also leave a fairly large feature tree with multiple planes and sketches. The cumbersome feature tree is fine because I was planning to have an in-context part studio for each utility line we have. Making changes to the line wouldn’t be too difficult, I would just have to right-click the line I want to move then edit that sketch or the sketch to the previous line. 

Questions

Anyone have example featurescript code of getting a point normal plane from an input vertex?

ilya_baran

Not quite what you're asking for yet, but playing around with array parameters and manipulators gives what looks like the start of something useful:
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/5a344daad1ec87e14cdb6dc6/v/ecb65f1d16cb348a9ebd6674/e/aa12d914d70aad241d8c51aa

ilya_baran

V2 https://cad.onshape.com/documents/5a344daad1ec87e14cdb6dc6/v/132d1994587e7ba9f8a6f438/e/aa12d914d70aad241d8c51aa
works with the beam feature modulo the edge planarity requirement.

ilya_baran

Unfortunately, creating an interactively-editable sketch or opening/closing dialogs is not something that FeatureScript can do.

ilya_baran

V3, which now supports specifying relative positions of the lines in 3D was blocked by a bug I fixed in the latest update, so now I can post it:
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/5a344daad1ec87e14cdb6dc6/v/1e3cdf77f2c028b1f6d2605a/e/d6044307bd7c5a3a3121deb5

It supports specifying line extents relative to "anchor" vertices and arcs in the part studio, to make it more parametric.  It also supports joining the line segments with arcs.

mahir

Nice work, @ilya_baran. I'm kind of sad I didn't think of it. Looks like it was fun to code.

mahir

Taking this FS to its next logical step, I would suggest allowing the option for each relative offset to include more than one direction. This way, you can connect two positions in space using a direct line, instead of 3 separate XYZ line segments.

ilya_baran

Thanks, @mahir -- yeah, it was fun to code
Agreed that non-ortho lines are the next step -- it'll take some iteration to get it working well (and it would be good to have feedback from people who actually need the functionality, @bryce_hruska), and my day job is getting configurations out the door, so I will not be in the least offended if you take a stab at it.

owen_sparks

Thanks @ilya_baran , this is a very nice example of FS, and useful too.

Cheers,

Owen S.

MBartlett21

@ilya_baran

This is a very useful feature.