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Making a beehive

irene_riversirene_rivers Member Posts: 17
edited November 2016 in Community Support
I'm trying to make a beehive in the form of a hexagon.
My current plan has been to trace a beehive pattern, use the spline tool, trace the holes, and extrude them.  

This is the image: http://previews.123rf.com/images/alexandrmoroz/alexandrmoroz1206/alexandrmoroz120600016/13894400-black-honeycomb-pattern-isolated-on-a-white-Stock-Photo-hive.jpg

However, this also means that I have to use the line tool to trace over the other parts of the pattern to form a shape.
My current design technically works, but I rather have the beehive to be more symmetrical, so as to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

I've made the document "Beez Nuts" public, so please feel free to come check it out and give me any suggestions!
Does anyone have any ideas on how to make each hole the same size and be of equal distance from each other?
The holes near the edge of the hexagon should still be full size.

Thanks :smiley:

Best Answers

Answers

  • TimRiceTimRice Member, Moderator, Onshape Employees Posts: 315
    Searching through public documents is not always the easiest. Could you share the doc url here?
    Tim Rice | User Experience | Support 
    Onshape, Inc.
  • bruce_williamsbruce_williams Member, Developers Posts: 842 PRO
    Very elegant Tim!  That was clever to put two cells together; saves the math too.  :)  I forgot pattern has 2nd direction and I should have added the parts.  thanks for the lesson!

    A couple questions - 
    1) What is best practice on patterns?  The honeycomb could be sketch pattern, feature pattern, or part pattern.
    2) Could you share your document with copy permission?  I would like to go through it.


    www.accuratepattern.com
  • An idea- use the polygon tool to draw a hexagon in a sketch. Use the line offset tool to copy the same hexagon to define a wall thickness. Extrude the resulting face to make a singal hexagonal tube.

    Finally, use the linear pattern tool to copy the tube into a honeycomb. All the offsets can be measured from the sketch.

    See image below, or public document 'Honeycomb Experiment'



    Seems to work ok.
  • irene_riversirene_rivers Member Posts: 17
    Thank you guys!  I'm printing the file right now and it looks amazing :D 
  • stefan_nilssonstefan_nilsson Member Posts: 7 ✭✭
    I took a different approach. In order to constrain the honeycomb to an arbitrary rectangle i could not use a regular polygon. Instead i used line segments constrained by the dimensions of the surrounding rectangle. I then extruded the line segments into surfaces which were in turn thickened and drafted.

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