Simpler fasteners?

Joe Dunfee

 On hte Windows 10 thread, another user mentioned the poor performance of his laptop, and also mentioned a large number of fasteners.  I though I would bring this issue to a new thread, and ask if there was any advice to deal with it. I know the standard way is to put the fasteners on a specific layer, and keep that layer frozen unless you need to see the fasteners.  But, when you do need them, and thawing that layer causes performance to lag so much that it is a serious problem, you have no recourse at this time, other than getting rid of the fasteners.

@Scott McKenzie:

I am currently running a Lenovo W530 laptop and it just doesn't have the power needed.  The model currently has 94 dependencies and about 1000 different fasteners in total

The fasteners that BricsCAD mechanical has in the library have a lot of detail that probably would be best to omit.  I wish there were a way to still use the fastener library, but have the option of omitting a lot of the details. It is likely that the existing fastener library was generated parametrically, I imagine it would not be too difficult for the source to generate another comparable library without the threads or even the chamfer at the top.

Ideally, there would be a way to insert a fastener, and later run a routine that would swap between the threaded and non-threaded versions.  It would be a fairly simple block substitution process.  I think the only potential liability would be constraints to the bolts, since the process would likely result in those constraints being lost. 

I imagine most people are happy with threaded bolts, until the computer's performance starts to decline as the model increases in complexity as the design process continues. But, it can be hard to predict how the computer can handle a future model, and you often don't realize the problem until it is too late.  So, the idea of a utility to automatically do that substitution would be ideal.

But, for the user, there is no way to even detect what kind of bolt you have by looking at its properties. The block name is not related to the item. So, you can't do a simple block substitution, even if you had the simple fastener library.  It is this limitation that prevented me from using the fastener library, even though I don't have the performance issues with my models.

In the end, I decided to ignore the fastener library in my V14 Platinum, and have slowly created most of the fasteners I need.  But, it certainly is tedious and I wish I could somehow parametrically generate the various lengths of bolts.

How do others deal with fasteners?

-Joe

Richard Webb

 As you no doubt recall, back in the V13 days of the X-Solids library there were options for full, partial, and no threads for machine screws. Nuts, on the other hand, were always threaded. Non-threaded versions of each could be handy.

I agree that really nice-to-have option would be a toggle to switch between the current nominal thread profile and a simplified version with no threads and minimal detail. Use the unthreaded, low detail version while building the model and turn on the nominal threads/higher detail version when generating views.

Aside: I'd forgotten how much nicer the icons looked in V13. The dark green seems to enhance their visibility over the current blue-on-blue scheme.

Jim Canale

I rarely create models with more than a couple threaded holes or fasteners.  So I'm not as concerned about screen update speeds.  However, I'm not thrilled with the simplified threads in the BricsCAD library, and the way they are represented on generated 2D views.   I'm not bothered by the lack of a helix.  I'm concerned that external threads have root diameters that in no way represent the real thing.  Ditto the minor diameter of Internal threads.   For instance, the minor diameter of a 1/4-20 threaded hole should be about  .201", for a typical 75% thread engagement.   (The minor diameter of a 1/4-28 threaded hole would be about .215".)   If I "drill and tap" my model by subtracting a 1/4-20 bolt from the library, I wind up with a "thread" that has a root diameter of .163".   It doesn't quite look right.   Also, if I forget to dimension the thread,  and build the part a few years later, I might not remember that I needed a 1/4-28 thread instead of 1/4-20.   If it were more accurate, the minor dimension would tip me off.   (Yes I know I can turn on the hidden layer and measure the thread pitch.)

There is probably no good solution for this, other than to create the thread from scratch in all it's highly detailed glory.

 

Scott McKenzie

 For me, building a rather large model with a lot of threaded holes, nuts 'welded' onto other plates and a couple hundred pounds of bolts the threads are slowing things down a lot.  As for the accuracy of the threads themselves, I am not too concerned with that, I am not dimensioning the threads in the model or my drawings - they are more of a marker.  

Personally, the way that Solidworks displays threads is how I would go, they have a texture applied to the tapped face of the hole or the outer face of the bolt thread that shows some crude threads - good enough for a model, the thread itself is shown as a circle on the face with hidden lines.  Just thinking about it now, this cylinder could have a bit of xdata attached to it to give you the details of the fastener or the tapped hole, see this link: http://intercad.com.au/cosmetic-threads-workaround-when-their-display-is-affected-by-chamfers-or-fillets-2/.  Something similar could be achieved with AutoLisp when it comes to tapped holes, I will put this in the queue of programs to write, if it works I will release it.  The other benefit of this is when you create your 2D drawings using the VIEWBASE commands everything is drawn to show a simplified representation of the threads.

If we are voting on how to handle threads in BricsCAD, don't show them, just show the major and minor diameters as above.