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Hole Chart, update question
2

Hole Chart, update question

Hole Chart, update question

(OP)
I have a drawing where I manually added several sketched circles to the top view. I then hole charted everything by selecting the face and the circle sketches. The chart shows all of your typical feature holes and it also shows the X-Y coordinates of the sketched circles. I just added another sketched circle...is there a way to select the added circle and the chart and force an update?  

Tom Malinski
Sr Design Engineer
OKay Industries
New Britain CT

RE: Hole Chart, update question

RMB click on the Hole Table in the View Manger and select Edit Feature, then select additional holes from the graphics area.

How are you creating and selecting the sketched circles in the view? I am unable to select a sketched circle for inclusion to a Hole Table.

cheers

RE: Hole Chart, update question

(OP)
CBL, I am not able to select the sketch geometry either when editing the chart as you suggested. But I thought when I initially created the chart it worked properly, However, since you raised the question of how I was doing this, I investigated a little closer and found that it did not hole chart the sketch circle as I thought, but rather it selected what appears to be empty space inside a cut feature, but very close to the sketch hole.
WOW how did it do that?? thanks for the help CBL. This could have been a problem.

Let me explain what I'm doing.
When I have a cut feature in a plate for a progressive die, we usually WEDM to produce feature. So in my drawing I have to show a WEDM start hole, just a drilled hole somewhere inside the feature. I typically just draw a sketch circle representing the hole, dimension its location and label it with a leader note. But this time I have a ton of regular feature holes so I decided to hole chart everything include my sketched circles also.

Thanks
Tom

Tom Malinski
Sr Design Engineer
OKay Industries
New Britain CT

RE: Hole Chart, update question

(OP)
OK, so how do I create a feature hole thats chartable inside a cut thru cavity?
Is there a simple way to fool fool SolidWorks? a cut feature inside a cut feature?

Tom Malinski
Sr Design Engineer
OKay Industries
New Britain CT

RE: Hole Chart, update question

(OP)
By the way, I started a new hole chart, and if I select faces to chart it picks up all the holes, but it also picks up a corner rad from each of my cut thru features!! This must be a bug. this is how earlier I was fooled thinking it was charting my sketched circles.

Tom Malinski
Sr Design Engineer
OKay Industries
New Britain CT

RE: Hole Chart, update question

No, that's not a bug. If you want holes only you will have to select each hole edge ... or deslect the corner rads. Selecting by face will select all features in that face.

With regard the "cut feature inside a cut feature" ... could you live with two configs and matching Hole Table. One for the start holes and the other for final forms?

cheers

RE: Hole Chart, update question

Oooh! ... oooh! ... oooh!  wavey2

For the "cut feature inside a cut feature", you can create a multi-body part by adding either a surface extrusion or thin wall extrusion to represent the WEDM hole. Then include those into the Hole Table.

cheers

RE: Hole Chart, update question

My laptop just jumped up and down on the desk for some reason.

Chris
SolidWorks 06 5.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 02-10-07)

RE: Hole Chart, update question

lol Sorry Chris, When the effect of the drugs start to wear off, I tend to get over-excited sometimes. smile

cheers

RE: Hole Chart, update question

thumbsup
Whew! I thought it was possessed.

Chris
SolidWorks 06 5.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 02-10-07)

RE: Hole Chart, update question

(OP)
Thanks CBL, I'll try your suggestion for the WEDM start hole
As far as using edges for hole charting, I've been playing with that. The down side is it makes independant entries in the chart for each stepped diameter. Most of our holes are double and tripple stepped with nearside and farside c-bores with a common thru hole. This makes for a long, long chart. when I pick the face, it makes a single entry. The chart properties lets me combine like descriptions, but not like x & y locations, if it did this would not be a problem.

Nit Pick here...when I pick edge of a farside c-bore it charts it with the words "far side" and it is not editable in the chart. It seems all other descriptions are editable and can be erased or replaced with my own text, but not "far side" Unless I'm missing something, which is likely!!


thanks for your help
Tom

Tom Malinski
Sr Design Engineer
OKay Industries
New Britain CT

RE: Hole Chart, update question

Tom,

We design for manufature, which means we model wire starts and and cavity/dowle reliefs.  Then we model in the WEDM cavities.  There are two confiqurations, Milling and Default.

I have pictures and an example file on my blog.

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse/perspectives_from_engineering/index.html

The Model for Manufacturing post and the Reduced Dimension Drawing, Part 3 post are most relevant to what you need.

Regards,

Anna Wood
SW07 SP2.1, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450
WD Raptors, 1 Gb network connection
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

RE: Hole Chart, update question

(OP)
Thanks, AnnaWood. This was a lot of good information, a Star for You....
In our company OKay Industries (okayind.com) we use Mostly Autocad and Mastercam for CNC Mill & WEDM.

The transition to Solid modeling is being led by myself. I am one of 8 design engineers in our company. The majority of the work by others still flows out of Eng as 2d Autocad geometry. I on the other hand am doing about 95% of my work in solidworks. But I am forced to save all of my SW drawings as AutocCad to convert to 2d geometry prior to sending the geometry down stream to our Mill & WEDM dep't. The reason we need dimensioned hole charts at the rough manufacturing level is because we do a ton of very close tolerance work and the preferred method for finish hole machining is Jig Grinding. Our Jig Grind machines are not CNC The operators need Hole Charts with dimensions. Our WEDM & Mill dept use Mastercam. It is a slow process for them to transition to work with Solid models. Understand, we are a very progressive company, but we are still in the 2d world for the most part.

I appreciate all of your help with this and understand about RDD's and we actually do this but to a lesser degree. All of our designers were tool and die makers by trade and totally understand the various manufacturing methods.

Again, thanks for your help. Configurations look like a good way to handle the WEDM SH problem. I was pondering the idea of possibly overlaying configurations on the same drawing view using layers to turn them on or off. But I would need to register and lock the the drawing views on top of each other. One configuration would show the start holes and one would shown the finished cavities. This way I could release one print to the floor. Too bad SolidWorks won't let you dimension from one view to another.

Tom

Tom Malinski
Sr Design Engineer
OKay Industries
New Britain CT

RE: Hole Chart, update question

Tom,

Thanks for the star.... smile

You will notice on the RDD's for the die block that I do dimension the holes that will be jig ground.

We just made the leap to more directly using math data and RDD's at the beginning of 2006.  Been laying the groundwork since late 2003 when we started using SolidWorks.  Still have a sub-set of tool design still done in AutoCAD.  I am sure our toolroom environments are much the same.

We regularly build dies that have cutting clearances of .0002"-.0003" (sometimes less) with several hundred punches in the arrays. Guided stripper clearances of a .0001" or ring fits in the punch holder if the stripper is not guiding.

I have a new tool that will have around 1100 punches in the space of 5" x 12.5".  980 of the punches are .062" sq with an air hole down the middle.  The cutting clearance on this tool will be bigger at .0005", .0025" in the guided stripper.

Float the two die halves together, lock down the bolts, then take the tool over to the jig grinders to line jig grind the plates to the shoes.  The dimensions on sheet one are to facilitate the jig grinding process.

The latest versions of MasterCAM X2 can read SolidWorks models directly.  It is unfortunate that you need to create dwg's, when the CAM packages can read the math data.

FWIW, just some insight into what we build at Auer.

Regards,



Anna Wood
SW07 SP2.1, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450
WD Raptors, 1 Gb network connection
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

RE: Hole Chart, update question

Quote:

I have a new tool that will have around 1100 punches in the space of 5" x 12.5".  980 of the punches are .062" sq with an air hole down the middle.  The cutting clearance on this tool will be bigger at .0005", .0025" in the guided stripper.

That should read .0002"... smile

Regards,

Anna Wood
SW07 SP2.1, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450
WD Raptors, 1 Gb network connection
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

RE: Hole Chart, update question

(OP)
Thanks, Anna. I might be picking your brain a little for progressive die/solidWorks stuff. You seem to be doing very similar tool work as we do. Most of my projects are Medical. My current project is for the Da vinci Robotic Surgery Mono Polar Scissors. Check out this link http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/index.aspx

We are already using MasterCam X2 and I'm pressing our CNC departments to learn how to work with my models directly, it's mostly a cultural change but will require training and a positive attitude. Many of the toolmakers are used to my SW prints and like some of the added bells and whistles. I brought out a simple exploded view of a complex fixture I did for an automatic blade grinding machine. They loved it. It's just a matter of time and others will jump on the SW band wagon.
Our Engineering Director has given me a lot of lattitude as far as deviation to our standard Engineering process so I will be working hard to establish new standards specific to SW designs

Tom

Tom Malinski
Sr Design Engineer
OKay Industries
New Britain CT

RE: Hole Chart, update question

Tom,

Yes, we do a lot for the semiconductor and medical industries. Thin film, close tolerance, non-metallic stamping/automation amongst a host of other things.  Wish our new website was up, it showcases what we do better.

Keep working at it...  We are in very similar circumstances.  We are just a bit further along the path as you.

It is ALL cultural and mindset.  It took a few changes in personal in our toolroom before we could make the change to using the math data.  Some folks moving on to different companies allowed us to bring in new folks that were used to working with math data in a modern toolroom.

Management at Auer is 100% behind all the new ways we have been working.  We have been seeing the results with increase productivity.  

We started small and picked our battles carefully to gain the confidence of the downstream people that use our data. You will get there, it just may take some time.

Regards,

Anna Wood
SW07 SP2.1, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450
WD Raptors, 1 Gb network connection
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

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