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Projecting a solid or surface onto someting else
martin_kopplow
Member Posts: 536 PRO
Maybe I'm not seeing the obvious, but what would be the best way to project the outline of a solid onto a plane or face in a given direction? My solid in question has round shapes and fillets all over, so I cannot project the edges. I need this to make fixtures and transport cases that should match the exact outline of the solids (or even assemblies). I know I could 'use' in sketches, but that'd require me to know in advnce, which faces are the outmost, ab´nt then trim the intersecting ones and figure everything out. I am loolkng for a way to just selecte the solid(s) to project, a direction and a target. The result shoud be a closed set of continuous curves.
Comments
The best tool I've found for this is a Custom FeatureScript by Morgan: Project Body.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/201b33ee5450cefbca3b34b8/v/9028ee782ed5ec471178bca1/e/03f0c71d4856a8408c7766a0
[edit to remove the Enterprise from the link above - thanks @eric_pesty ]
You can see here that you can project both bodies and faces onto anything: planes, mate connectors, faces etc.
If you select the body as the thing you're projecting it will always update and include the entire body. Sounds like just the thing for you.
@romeograham Hi, this look like something that might help with my problem. Thanks for pointing it out. I'd like to try, but this appears to be an internal link you sent? I cannot login there …
I wonder why this industry standard fuctionality isn't there in the top row of tools? I still believe I must have missed something. :0/
it relies on an undocumented featurescript function. The feature can sometimes fail randomly, and can produce some pretty high regen times. It works great with simple models, but I've run into issues with it. But it's super useful, so I hope it sees some improvements in the future.
Custom FeatureScript and Onshape Integrated Applications
The link created from an "enterprise" subscription, if you replace the "JPS" in the jps.onshapte.com at the beginning with "CAD" it works:
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/201b33ee5450cefbca3b34b8/v/9028ee782ed5ec471178bca1/e/03f0c71d4856a8408c7766a0
Thanks @eric_pesty ! I forgot to do that little bit of housekeeping when I pasted the link.
@Caden_Armstrong you're right - this does sometimes result in long-ish regen times, but I find it really useful, so it's worth it. I imagine there would be other ways to get this done.
Thanks fo the hints. Oh yes, regen times appear to be quite long. It is probably best to only use this in small models and only once or so.
It appears the golden rule here is it always projects in the surface normal of the target. Heavyly warped faces will fail. It'll probably work for the purpose, but I still wonder why such a basic thing isn't part of the on-board toolset.