Parametric holes in sheet metal part

DorianDV
DorianDV
in Sheet Metal

Hello,
I have the following problem: I designed a fairly simple sheet metal part starting from a rectangular base flange.
The part has 3 bends on two opposing sides of the base (bend1-30mm; bend 2-40mm; bend 3 - 8mm)
thickness is irrelevant
On the 40 mm flange I need to punch a series of holes in different shapes/increments
I've drawn the 2d geometry of the holes on the face plane and punched them through with the extrude command but it is verry difficult to parametrize them (their size/ increments)
and verry TIME CONSUMING. Tried the PARAMETRIZE command on the sheet metal toolbar but that applies constraints only to the main body of the model, not the holes.
So if I need to manufacture my part at a length of 3500mm for example with circular holes on the side flanges at an increment of say 150 mm that's a lot of manual constraining/drawing-extruding holes...

Questions:

Does BricsCAD offer any options to speed up my workflow in this particular case? So I can skip manually adding constraints for every hole in the part.

Can I make some sort of sketch or 3d array to modify the number of holes dynamically as I increase/decrease the length of the part?

Comments

  • Damian Harkin
    Damian Harkin

    Here's an idea (workaround) that can work if the needed holes are at a regular spacing.
    In a separate model, make one hole subtractor eg an 8mm dia cylinder. Use ARRAYRECT to make a parametric array of such hole subtractors with the maximum forseeable number of holes, eg 1 column and 100 rows. For each sheet metal tray, tweak your holes array to suit the particular part you are making. Save this model eg MyHoles.dwg.
    Now, INSERT MyHoles as a block into the sheet metal drawing. Explode the block. Explode the array, and SUBTRACT the hole solids from your sheet metal part.

  • Roy Klein Gebbinck
    Roy Klein Gebbinck

    I am using V16 and do not have a Sheet Metal license, so I am not sure this will work:

    1. Create a separate dwg with a constrained row of cylinders on layer BC_SUBTRACT. Make sure the distance between the cylinders is exposed as a parameter and that the number of cylinders matches the max. number of holes.
    2. _BmInsert this as a Sheet Metal feature.
    3. Constrain the position of the feature.
    4. Link the hole distance parameter to the total length of the product with some clever arithmetic. Depending on the length of the product some cylinders will fall outside the sheet metal.
This discussion has been closed.