×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Volume of Parts

Volume of Parts

Volume of Parts

(OP)
Is there a quick, acurate and easy way to find the volume of a part?  I have a complex faceted tank that I need to get the Volume of... How can I retrieve this information from SW?

RE: Volume of Parts

If your model is solid, simply go to "Tools-->Mass Properties", or hit the blue scale icon on the "Tools" toolbar.

On justice and on friendship, there is no price, but there are established credit limits.

RE: Volume of Parts

(OP)
Nope it is not solid, I understand what you are saying. But I made this tank from sheet metal, so now I would like for SW to tell me what the internal volume of this tank is. I already know the volume, I just wanted to know if SW could tell me easily.
I guess I could go in and draw  a representation of the liquid and use the information from that. But why should we have to do that to get the information?

RE: Volume of Parts

Try this (Putting the liquid inside the tank)

1) Place your tank into an assembly
2) Make a large enough solid to represent the liquid. NOTE: Must be larger than the tank itself.
3) Place the liquid into the assembly and mate it so that it in compasses the tank. If the liquid only goes to a certain level on the tank make the it so.
4) Edit the Liquid in the Assembly and click on Cavity in your Mold toolbar.
5) Click on the tank in the FM and click OK
6) Select the bodies you want to keep (which will be the tank)

You now have liquid inside your tank. and that part can be maesued with Mass properties.

I hope that helps,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies
http://www.3dvisiontech.com
http://www.scottjbaugh.com
FAQ731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

RE: Volume of Parts

drhine,

I would try doing as Scott suggested, as he is pretty sharp about some of these things.

As for why you have to something like this to get a volume of something that doesn't exist, is well, because it doesn't exist. I know you want SW to tell you the volume of what the shape would hold, but your probably not going to get it. A total "boundry" volume of the part in whatever shape it is would be nice, but that would also be hard to calculate if you have curves and drafts and lofts, etc.

I would MUCH rather SW concentrate on improving other things (and fixing some things), like the drawing package, than creating a button that calculates the area or volume of something that isn't really there...

Mr. Pickles

RE: Volume of Parts

(OP)
I agree Mr. Pickles,

I would rather have other things improved as well, and at the top of thst list would be the drawing package. I was just curiousas to how complicated it would be to do this, and you all satisfied my curiousity. I will try what Scott suggested and see how it works out.

Thank you all,

DRHINE

RE: Volume of Parts

I suppose that would be possible, but I wouldn't highly suggest it. Unless you understood in-contexting well.

You would have to in-context sketchs, planes or features to the volumed part. I'm afraid you would start having circular references. When that starts happening your trouble because they can be hard to figure out which external reference or multiple references is causing the problem.

The Volumed part already has an incontexted relationship to the main part (like the 2 liter bottle). So by in-contexting, the incontext model already...you will probably get circular references before it's all over.

Good Luck!

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies
http://www.3dvisiontech.com
http://www.scottjbaugh.com
FAQ731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources