Text extruded cut

Is there a way to make the text you may use for an extruded cut something
that can be changed when a part is inserted into an assembly many times?
Let's say that you want the same part but with different text on each
inserted instance.

I'm already using a design table for different physical configurations of
the part (a button), but can't seem to find a way to vary the text at the
assembly level without each instance literally being a different part.

Thanks,

-Martin

 

Is there a way to make the text you may use for an extruded cut something

Could the answer be to use the part design table to create a new
configuration for each legend instance and simply choose this configuration
in the assembly?


-Martin

 

I'm about 80% done writing a VBA routine (I spent all night digging through
documentation!) to create new extruded-cut-text features for each button
legend I'll need. The program reads a separate Excel file that has the
desired text and naming for both the sketch and the extruded cut feature.
This makes it a very simple matter to define fifty keycaps with different
text on them and execute one macro to do most of the drafting automatically.
Most of all, it's easy to maintain.

A design table, of course, would have to suppress all except the one I'll
need by means of distinct configurations that control the state of these
fifty-some extrusion-cuts. I could have the program fill-in the design
table as well, but I think I'll just do it by hand this time around. Gotta
get going with this...

Hopefully none of the bugs you mentioned will come to bite me by using this
approach.

-Martin

 

You propably need a separate configuration for each text feature. Then
simply select the configuration with the text feature you need.

There will be three drawbacks to this:

1. Using multiple configuration parts in an assembly can be a big
performance hit..
2. Using text in a part is a big performance hit.
3. You may change face IDs from config to config which may cause mates
to fail.

 

Hey, if you're writing your own macros already, I wouldn't worry about
waiting six months before taking the Advanced SW class.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

Well the class wouldn't be to learn about programming but rather to get more
into the SW way of doing thing and to understand how to approach assembly
and part design more intelligently. VBE API programming is not that
difficult once you know your way around VB and Windows programming in
general. I've done extensive work with both VB and C++, so all I had to do
was dig for the appropriate SW hooks and it all came together.

The routine works reasonably well. It created about 60 configurations in
twenty seconds. Of course, it took about four hours to find all the API
hooks.

Then I ran into the horrific file bloating problem SW seems to have. After
reading a number of posts on this NG I decided to try both the file
compaction tools and the "save as" approach. Using "save as" worked but
broke the models somehow. For example, four character extrude-cuts on flat
surfaces somehow lost the last two characters ON THE FEATURE ONLY. In other
words, if you edited the sketch, the text was all there. Ultimately, I
erased all sixty configurations as well as the associated extrude-cuts and
sketches, did a "save as" and ran my VB program again to add the
configurations, sketches and extrude-cuts. The file went from over 60MB to
about 4MB and didn't have any errors that I've been able to find.

-Martin

 

"Save As" can have problems with in-context design if you save an assembly
under a new name. SW is very picky about names.

I'm very fond of EcoSqueeze for reducing file size. Unfortunately, like most
diets, you get great results, but the pounds keep coming back.

I'm afraid I've got no explanation for that baffling behavior. The closest I
can come is to say that SW sometimes gets very strange when you are using a
lot of memory or haven't rebooted in a long time. When I run into things
like this, I try saving the part (possibly under a new name if I'm nervous
about saving a corrupt part), shutting down SW, rebooting the computer and
reloading the part.

You'll probably find that, as you work with the different configurations, SW
will start bloating the file again.


Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"