Custom Feature: OnlyTabs - A premium sheet metal tab and slot feature
Comments
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Yeah I haven't put as much effort into the distance based selection as the other options because I almost never use it, instead I try to run as many tabs as I can with one feature and thus one sheetmetalupdate call. For example in your image I'd probably have done equal spacing and deleted the whole edge chain of those inside edges including the bends with the tabs set to instance at ends.
It does need that arrow flip capability though for sure, I'll have to add that when I'm back in the states next week.
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@Derek_Van_Allen_BD Ah yes I see selecting the entire edge worked. I have an order of opperations issue with that slot in the middle. Thanks for the help. 👍️
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V21 of OnlyTabs adds the ability to create multiple chains of tab and slot on different parts within the same context all at once, since the expensive operation of most sheet metal features is the sheetmetalupdate call and only calling it once saves a lot of overhead for the model. Doesn't allow you to add tabs to multiple different contexts though, because that would have been harder to implement and doesn't actually save any performance overhead since you would then be updating two different contexts at once.
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V23 of OnlyTabs now adds the ability to select rip edges of sheet metal models so you don't need to pre-overlap your edge geometry to get your tab and slotted goods going. Even includes a nice little arrow manipulator to flip the direction of the tab joint if you change your mind about assembly halfway through production. Also fixed some merging bugs with the sheets that nobody called me out on.
Took a fundamental refactor of the work to use the actual std sheet metal edge change function but things should now run a little cleaner and theoretically more stable.
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