The damn thing is main source of any instability I am experiencing. If I don't put a lot of holes into my parts in assembly mode, I can go days/weeks without a crash. However, unfortunately-everything needs to be bolted together so I need to put holes in and better be sure to save often.
I don't use hole series- it sucks. I go insert by insert.
Cosmetic threads for pipe taps have not worked in any sp of 2005. They suck!
Cosmetic threads for regular tapped holes show up inconsistently. They just kinda suck, but hole callouts REALLY suck and I don't bother with them.
In fact anything in SW that came from the old CimLogic package sucks big time. I suppose they thought they were saving some development time by bringing all of that in several years ago- but (you guessed it) it sucks.
IMO- SW needs to trash the hole wizard and re-do it from the ground up. Quit patching something that was sucky from the start.
and furthermore: #$^()*&^%#)(^$#@&&?!!!
OK, I feel better now.
2005, sp01.1 ; AMD 3400+ with 2 gb. nvidia xgl1100.
Jeez jk, I have been using the hole wizard since 97 and haven't have many problems( if any) with crashes since I started. Assemblies, top down, bottom up, whatever. I just love it. ouch! owwie! oow, gotta go now, my nose is staring to hurt!!
IMHO, Cimlogic had an excellent SWX Add-In. It worked as advertised, with no tricks or work-arounds. Once SolidWorks got hold of it, they bastardized it into what we have today. Actually when it was still Cimlogic, the "hole series" holes were an awesome tool for putting ejector pin holes and CBores through all of the mold plates in one simple step.
Glad to hear it. Just out of curiosity, are you still using the hole series for ejector pin holes? I have looked at it for this a couple of times and it always seems to come up lacking and I go back to my original method. (after a little fling with MoldWorks, I am back to just using the SW core.)
Can't recall all of my objections right now, but one of them was that I always felt that the hole in the core (last part) should be a counterdrilled hole. With the hole series hole I would still need to go back and put in a separate clearance hole so that I would have what I wanted. I am also remembering an issue with stepped ejector pins not having an acceptable option with the hole series.
I'm alway open to trying better ways, but that never seemed like it was better.
No, as I said the SWX hole series holes are an abomination now. When Cimlogic had control, it would create an incontext relation through all of the plates with, IIRC, the first feature as the parent. So in essence, your ejector pin CBore in the ejector retainer plate was the parent. Have you abandoned MoldWorks? My boss at that time (3 years ago) bought 2 seats + SplitWorks based on a demo he saw. I tried like hell to use it but there was always some "gotcha" in the methodology that made it useless for us.
Yes, that's one problem we both share. I design mostly class 101 molds with hardened cavity and core blocks so my ejector pin holes (on size and primary clearance holes) are created with the hole wizard legacy Counterdrilled option in those blocks. The secondary clearance through the mold base and the ejector pin CBores are all created with the hole wizard but not the hole series.
I create a cavity stack assembly that includes the part, cavity & core blocks, core pins ejector pins and whatever else more or less touches plastic. Then I create a master or main assembly where I bring in the mold base assembly and the cavity stack assembly as subassemblies. I pattern the cavity stack subassembly for multi-cavity molds. I use the ejector pin holes I created in the cavity blocks to create my ejector pin CBores and through holes in the mold base assembly incontext to the cavity blocks. Its a manual operation on each plate in the mold base assembly. The method is slow but amazingly stable. In the Cimlogic days, it was a breeze. Edit the mold base assembly, pick the first plate, last plate choose the features for each plate and in between and they were created, automatically, incontext through all plates tied to the holes in the cavity block.
I also tried like hell to use it. Same sort of experience as yours too. There was always something that would give me fits. I was actively communicating with them to try and learn how they intended for us to use it and also to clean up glitches in the catalogs. Really nice people, but I finally gave up. I think one of the problems they had/have is that SW keeps changing itself and it is really difficult for a complex application like MoldWorks to keep up with all of it. That is why I went back to using the SW core-for better or worse. Another big factor in my decision to dump it was that I was really slow last year. I had a lot of time on my hands. In order to fool my wife into thinking that I had work, I would spend my days working religously on a personal component and mold base library. When my annual maintenance came up for MoldWorks, I had no money for it, and actually no need for a lot of it because my own catalog was nearly complete. Now that I am really busy again, this is all paying off in a major way.
My system is similar, but I don't put the ejectors into the stack (sub-assy) with the core,cavity,etc. The holes are in the core, but the pins get put in at the mold assembly level. At least that's the way I do it. With MW, you had to wait until the mold assembly level to put all of the pin and screw holes in. It was neat in one way in that all of the holes and hardware came all at once. What I didn't like about it was that my customers often wanted to see a basic concept before I dropped it into a mold base. That meant that I had to create a sketch that showed where I intended to put all that stuff, but none of the holes would be in the 3-d. If they were just looking at a parasolids file, then the sketch wouldn't show up. Then I would need to send them some sort of 2-d file too just so the sketch would show up. A real pain, and ultimately not worth it.
Anyway, the point of this thread was my frustration with the devolution of the hole wizard. Probably shouldn't have slammed CimLogic because I didn't use it as much as you did. My VAR got me a demo version to try but couldn't help me learn it. Therefore, since I was also new to SW, I struggled with it.
What I want is a user-customizable hole series tool. Also, they need to clean up the cosmetic threads. I don't have time right now to detail all of the problems I am having with them in 2005, sp01.1. They just really suck.
- having to travel another menu step just because those lame legacy holes have not been integrated into the main dialogue.
- Still no round off for depth in 2005 in hole callouts.
- All counterbore default are BLIND holes LOF'NL people. Not ever has a blind counterbored hole been used to fasten anything that I can recall. Also a part defined a sheet metal defaults to blind as well. Absolutely silly.
- Numbers don't update when you don't actually want a dead-on nominal size (no generic hole). i.e. .3755 hole still reports as .375 in tree.
- There is not a generic HW feature for making "those other threads or holes" that are used. Wheres my 1/4-40 hole? Why can't I add one?
GOOD - at least we can now re-select sketch plane
(this could just save my sill behind too) Let me move a hole patten from an assembly into a part. Just let me drag it in. About 20 percent of the time using incontext holes, I put them in the assembly and don't mean to. Ouch!
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