Home› Community Support

Welcome to the Onshape forum! Ask questions and join in the discussions about everything Onshape.

First time visiting? Here are some places to start:
  1. Looking for a certain topic? Check out the categories filter or use Search (upper right).
  2. Need support? Ask a question to our Community Support category.
  3. Please submit support tickets for bugs but you can request improvements in the Product Feedback category.
  4. Be respectful, on topic and if you see a problem, Flag it.

If you would like to contact our Community Manager personally, feel free to send a private message or an email.

Options

Seeking eyes on this design! (Total Newbie)

elizabeth_schmidtelizabeth_schmidt Member Posts: 5 ✭
in Community Support
Hello! 
I'm in an ENGR 101 class and our final project is to design a desktop organizer. Our teacher did a sink or swim sort of thing to see what we could teach ourselves about the program, and I think I'm doing pretty good for having not really touched it before. 
However, we have to set it up for laser engraving and I'm not sure how to make the tabs, other than manually adding them one at a time, and subtracting them, is that the right way to do it? 
Does anyone see any real obvious mistakes on this? I wasn't sure how to make it a solid piece, so my idea is to glue the left and right parts together. The flap *should* have the ability to pull up and expose the inside of the box...
Here is my design: 
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/75db4c2837e7d077bd9e40cb/w/f91d9bc401bba767a2b882a6/e/857f73a15bbbf131dcf834a8

Thanks, friends! :D 
I'm super excited to join this community and learn more! 

Answers

  • Options
    tim_hess427tim_hess427 Member Posts: 648 ✭✭✭✭
    Hi @elizabeth_schmidt, 

    I think this looks pretty good for a first time! A few thoughts come to mind:
    • It looks like the "flap" is supposed to rotate when it's assembled, right? I think it may interfere with the front lip on the box. 
    • It looks like you found the custom feature for adding tabs. That'll probably be the easiest way to add them. If you want to add them manually, you can model multiple tabs in one sketch, or you could model one tab and use a feature pattern to replicate it along an edge. 
    • How are the boxes going to be made? Are you going to split each side for each box so that they can all be laser cut as well?

  • Options
    lemon1324lemon1324 Member, Developers Posts: 223 EDU
    edited June 2021
    In "stock Onshape" yeah, that's how you'd have to do the tabs.  However, one of the really nice things about Onshape is the scripting ability - there's plenty of features people have written to do specific tasks like this in an easier way.
    In this case, you're looking for my suite of laser-cut design tools, Laser Joint, Kerf Compensation, and Auto Layout. @alnis_smidchens did a brief video tour of the joint FS, here: 
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPoJ484-7tI
    If you do decide to use these tools you'll need to change how you're doing the actual modeling a little to meet the prerequisites for the features, but nothing too drastic.
    Arul Suresh
    PhD, Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University
  • Options
    elizabeth_schmidtelizabeth_schmidt Member Posts: 5 ✭
    tim_hess427 said:
    Hi @elizabeth_schmidt, 

    I think this looks pretty good for a first time! A few thoughts come to mind:
    • It looks like the "flap" is supposed to rotate when it's assembled, right? I think it may interfere with the front lip on the box. 
    • It looks like you found the custom feature for adding tabs. That'll probably be the easiest way to add them. If you want to add them manually, you can model multiple tabs in one sketch, or you could model one tab and use a feature pattern to replicate it along an edge. 
    • How are the boxes going to be made? Are you going to split each side for each box so that they can all be laser cut as well?

    Thanks! 
    I realize now I'm gonna have to make each "face" of the box separate, rather than an extruded shape....arugh. Back to the drawing board. 
    Thanks for the note on the front tab, I'll shorten it on MK2. 
    It's gonna be sent to a laser engraver in the schools shop. 
  • Options
    bruce_williamsbruce_williams Member, Developers Posts: 842 PRO
    @elizabeth_schmidt

    check out the Split command which will aid in creating separate panels.
    www.accuratepattern.com
  • Options
    michael3424michael3424 Member Posts: 678 ✭✭✭✭
    @elizabeth_schmidt - FWIW, I've used @lemon1324's Laser Joint Featurescript on several occasion's to make finger joints similar to what you are designing and found Laser Joint to be a tremendous time saver.

Sign In or Register to comment.

Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Sign In

Categories

Vanilla Forums