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reusing sketches

I have a profile of channel section drawn as a layout sketch in an assembly. I want to reuse this sketch in numerous parts within the assembly so that all my channel sections are identical (they would just be different lengths and have other features applied to them). I know I can copy and paste the sketch into each of my parts but the copy does not have a link to the original. I don't want to use equations for this (due to the number of equations I would potentially need) nor a design table for a similar reason, and applying equal relations between entities in different sketches doesn't seem to work unless the entities being related are parallel. I can't use configurations of the same part since there are an infinite number of possible lengths. I am trying to keep my assembly as versatile as possible with all parameters driven via layout sketches or reference geometry at the assembly level.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

What I would like to be able to do is have the sketch defined in my assembly and then create a link to it when I need to use it in a part, with the ability to redefine the sketch plane and any external relations for each instance of the sketch.

TIA.

Reply to
Steven
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check out SW derived sketches

Kman

Reply to
Kman

Create a new part, with only a sketch of the channel profile (I will refer to this as profile.sldprt). Do not extrude the sketch. Then create a new assembly. Insert profile.sldprt into the assembly, and define it's position with mates or the default fixed position. Now insert a new part (named channel1.sldprt), and choose a plane that the profile from profile.sldprt is on. Convert entities from the sketch in profile.sldprt to the new sketch being created for channel1.sldprt, and extrude this sketch. Each additional channel must be started by inserting the profile.sldprt, mating the part so the profile is positioned correctly, then inserting a new part, converting entities (you can select one entity and choose closed profile).

Down side to this are you must insert profile.sldprt each time you want a different channel and position it properly. There are also some limitations to changes to the profile shape, although parametric changes to dimensions update with no problem.

If you want, I can e-mail you my crude example.

Another way, if your profile is already defined is to save it to a template and start each part based on the template. No updates to all profiles though.

Mike Rice snipped-for-privacy@netscape222.net (remove all 2's)

Reply to
Pmwh

Derived sketches are exactly what you want. Select the sketch that you want to derive, then ctrl + select the plane/face that you want to put it on then select Insert... Derived Sketch.... This will insert the sketch but it is blue - simply move it and constrain it where you want it and it will go black (if you try to add any dims it will over define).

Big advantage of this method - if you change the original sketch/profile all other derived sketches will change also.

Merry :-)

Reply to
Merry Owen

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