can't insert 'simple hole' on a plane. Is this true?

Hi all,

You can insert a hole wizard hole on a plane but I can't get sw2006 to
insert a simple hole on a plane because it requires you to select a
'face' to place the hole. I admit I rarely use simple holes so I just
wanted to check.

Zander

 

Pick the plane first, then pick the Hole Wizard.

Mike

 

Hi Mike,

I was talking about a 'simple hole' not a hole wizard hole. Sorry for
the confusion. The simple hole feature insists on a planar face to
pick. Which is just somehting I'd never noticed before.

Zander

 

You can make the hole on a face and "edit sketch plane" to move it to a
plane.

 

.... although if you do that, you run a 50/50 chance of the feature not
working. You can't change the direction of the hole cut extrude, and you
can't directly control the plane normal. Since solid face normals
always point out, and cuts always go in, the cut will always go to the
"red" side of the plane (which you can see if you use shaded planes).
There has been discussion here before about plane normals, some of it
interesting, none of it really helpful. The only way to get a plane you
can use where you have a plane you can't use is to draw a line and make
a plane at an angle through the line at 180 deg from the unusable plane.
This will flip the plane normal and make the cut go the right way.

....well, ok, there is another trick.

- create hole on face
- edit sketch plane to a plane where you want it
- (hole cuts air)
- edit sketch plane to some other plane, say perpendicular to the
desired plane
- edit sketch plane back to the desired plane
- (hole cuts solid)

The series of changes combined with some twist on the right hand rule
makes the sketch normal flip opposite the plane normal. Useful?
Doubtful. Interesting? A little. Odd? Definitely. We've been asking
for tools to control plane normals or at least to remove limitations
like this one imposed by plane/face normals for a while now.

Matt

 

appears that sw2005 was the same way.

you can select the plane, create sketch, draw a circle, do cut

i think it's always been that way, actually.

bill

 

Surfaces, including planes, can have two normals.
By convention, the order in which things are defined
controls which side the normal points towards.
Just alter the way or order in which you define things ....
Example for a general surface with control points:
reverse the order in which the points are chosen.
For a plane using a line which end of the line may
be important (I don't know in specific cases) -- if using
3 points, reverse two of them.
A point & a line? Which are you selecting first?

Try it & see.

 

I agree with Dale with the lack of use of the simple hole feature. Why
would you not use a hole wizard instead? (That way you can change the
type of the hole if need be some time in the future).

Or, make a macro that draws you a circle and dimensions it?

Bigger issue is why we do not have any normal selection/control option
for planes? Also, plane management is really non-existent in
Solidworks which makes it somewhat annoying to work with for
complicated parts.

 

The hole wizard only goes upto 1" holes I believe. So, sometimes the
simple hole wizard has a use, although I agree it's hard to justify as
it hardly differs from a cut-extrude.

 

You're on my ignore list, but I'm on the road tonight, so it's google
access. Are you a SW user? The only plane type I know of where the
plane normal is selection order dependent is the 3 pt / line and point
plane (and the order of points taken from the line is probably
dependent on the order in which it was drawn). The offset and angle
planes are dependent on the normal of the parent, and I think the
normal to curve is dependent on which end of the curve. Tangent to
surface is probably dependent on the face normal of the tangency
parent.

matt

 

The hole wizard database only goes upto 1" dia. , if you key in an
override, it will still display whatever you selected ie. 1" even if
you keyed in 2", so it makes the feature manager a little misleading.
It's like in older sw versions, if you had a 6-32 tapped hole and
editing the feature to make it 8-32 then 50% of the time the feature
manager would still show 6-32 so you would have to manually edit the
feature manager name.... On big parts these things can cause
confusion, also I use the 'number of mouse clicks required' method to
ascertain efficiency of any operation. Speaking of which, I had a
great break timer once (which I lost and can't remember the name of)
that logged mouse clicks in a given day and also distance travelled by
the mouse as well as 'efficiency of travel' ie if you were wandering
your mouse around the screen not clicking but being indecisive it would
know.

I would average over a 1km of motion per day - I forget the number of
clicks but it is high. I use the windows setting that makes a single
click a double click for windows operations - helps a lot.

If you cant tell I've been working all weekend, day & night..... !!!!

Zander

 

The hole wizard database only goes upto 1" dia. , if you key in an
override, it will still display whatever you selected ie. 1" even if
you keyed in 2", so it makes the feature manager a little misleading.
It's like in older sw versions, if you had a 6-32 tapped hole and
editing the feature to make it 8-32 then 50% of the time the feature
manager would still show 6-32 so you would have to manually edit the
feature manager name.... On big parts these things can cause
confusion, also I use the 'number of mouse clicks required' method to
ascertain efficiency of any operation. Speaking of which, I had a
great break timer once (which I lost and can't remember the name of)
that logged mouse clicks in a given day and also distance travelled by
the mouse as well as 'efficiency of travel' ie if you were wandering
your mouse around the screen not clicking but being indecisive it would
know.

I would average over a 1km of motion per day - I forget the number of
clicks but it is high. I use the windows setting that makes a single
click a double click for windows operations - helps a lot.

If you cant tell I've been working all weekend, day & night..... !!!!

Zander

 

look out for matt tonight if you are on the interstate people he's the one
in the semi trailer hauling his vanity...

 

All planes or surfaces can have two normals.

Which order did you select things in? The pont and then the line
or the line & then the point?
Which end of the line did you select it near? Some systems may
order the endpoints by that selection criteria while others may
look at how the line was created.

Probably by default, if so. You may have a capability to reverse
the normal(s).

 

I admit to never having used legacy holes in the HW - hmmmm....

Zander

 

Did you try it? Results?