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Circular Pattern - Can't Select the Thing to Duplicate

WingsyWingsy Member Posts: 18 ✭✭

Trying to make a ball chain sprocket. I'm trying to do a circular pattern of that hole you see up there and it won't let me select it. I thought I found the answer in the drop-down menu "pattern type" but all that allows me to select are edges and faces of the invisible hole. How do I select this?   (What is it the Borg say???  "Assistance is futile..: or something.)
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/f6baa4466f87ddff8639e4da/w/bf8456ec5531b3b060ccfb07/e/12a1cc6e7b354b5963e3dea5

Comments

  • john_faracijohn_faraci Member Posts: 11 ✭✭
    Try changing it from a part pattern to a feature pattern.
  • Jake_RosenfeldJake_Rosenfeld Moderator, Onshape Employees, Developers Posts: 1,646
  • john_faracijohn_faraci Member Posts: 11 ✭✭
    Jake, is there an advantage to one or the other?
  • bradley_saulnbradley_sauln Moderator, Onshape Employees, Developers Posts: 373
    @john_faraci a face pattern is a lot less resource intensive as a feature pattern regenerates the features for each instance.
    Engineer | Adventurer | Tinkerer
    Twitter: @bradleysauln


  • Jake_RosenfeldJake_Rosenfeld Moderator, Onshape Employees, Developers Posts: 1,646
    @john_faraci

    Face pattern used to be a lot faster than feature pattern.  Now feature pattern with "Apply per instance" turned OFF comes pretty close.  Feature pattern with "Apply per instance" ON is much slower than face pattern (because that flag controls whether a regeneration is done for each instance of the feature).

    Face pattern is more declarative of which exact faces you want to pattern, but feature pattern is more parametric in that if the selected feature changes its output, the feature pattern will pick up the change, rather than having to go in and select more/different faces.
    Jake Rosenfeld - Modeling Team
  • john_faracijohn_faraci Member Posts: 11 ✭✭
    OK Thank you Bradley and Jake for the explanations.
  • brian_bradybrian_brady Member, Developers Posts: 505 EDU
    @john_faraci

    Face pattern used to be a lot faster than feature pattern.  Now feature pattern with "Apply per instance" turned OFF comes pretty close.  Feature pattern with "Apply per instance" ON is much slower than face pattern (because that flag controls whether a regeneration is done for each instance of the feature).

    Face pattern is more declarative of which exact faces you want to pattern, but feature pattern is more parametric in that if the selected feature changes its output, the feature pattern will pick up the change, rather than having to go in and select more/different faces.
    Face patterning is more intuitive as well since parametric modelers are "feature based" (hence the feature list/tree). Using faces for patterning feels so AutoCAD 2006 to me. I am glad feature patterns added the "apply per instance" to make them faster. To a normal CAD user, how a pattern is generated behind the scenes is not that important. To us a feature is a collection of faces, so we don't understand why we should perform a lot more picking/selecting to improve performance instead of just picking one feature from the list and letting the software figure out how to do the task efficiently.
  • WingsyWingsy Member Posts: 18 ✭✭
    Thanks Jake. Your mod to my drawing was very helpful. I had been there before but I expected to see the entire object selected rather than just it's pieces. Had I just moved farther along it would have materialized right in front of me. 
  • WingsyWingsy Member Posts: 18 ✭✭

    Finished that sprocket and the chain fits perfectly. Try doing that with Tinkercad! (Which I actually did but it doesn't look nearly as nice.)
  • owen_sparksowen_sparks Member, Developers Posts: 2,660 PRO
    Nice :+1:
    OwS.
    Business Systems and Configuration Controller
    HWM-Water Ltd
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