Link To Thickness - tip

Hey y'all,

Discovered a nice little thing the other day that I thought I'd share, some of you will no doubt already know and some of you may not:

If you link a dimension value (such as the thickness of a shell) to the name 'thickness' then suddleny the tick-box appears in the boss extrude/cut dimension, as for sheet-metal.

Also, linked values can be linked to in the document properties dialogue - I didn't know that either until the other day!

Hope you're all having fun!

Lee Bazalgette CSWP

Reply to
lee baz
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Another thought to go along with that is that you can have your part template set up with a variable called "thickness" and then you will always have that option without going through the link process.

WT

Reply to
Wayne Tiffany

Reply to
lee baz

Ok, here's what I have discovered. Apparently you can't directly type in "Thickness" as a variable since it appears that it's a reserved word for a linked value. So what you have to do is start a sheet metal part. This will insert the "Thickness" variable for you as a linked variable. Then double-click the thickness value in the graphics area and unlink it. Ctrl-Q to basically release that variable, delete all the sheet metal features and the sketch, and then save as a part template. The variable should still be there and valid. I have tried this in SW2006 & 2007, but not 2008.

WT

Reply to
Wayne Tiffany

Thanks for doing the forensics.

Is there a real benefit to using the thickness value, rather than using "until next/selected"? Does it treat the extrude as "blind", and therefore computes it faster than "until next/selected"?

Is it still better to use "through all" where possible - I recall this being the case from earlier posts? One thing I like about that when modelling through-holes, is that you don't get unnecessary extrude/cut depth dimensions.

John H

Reply to
John H

I don't know those answers. I remember Matt posting a study that in his instance, up to surface was a faster rebuild than through all. Probably because it only has to go so far and not look to see if anything is out there in space, which if true, then link to thickness might achieve the same benefit. I generally just use through all because then if faces change, I don't lose that reference. Sounds like some serious testing of this would be in order.

WT

Reply to
Wayne Tiffany

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