Trying it out has made me realise it needs a little refinement.
The hole works fine, with a rotation on the face it’s ‘glued to’, about the guide point, if placed on edges parallel to the red axis, or not parallel to any axis.
The screws place easily only on a surface in the red/green plane, but need rotation on one or two axes in other orientations. I’ll have a little rethink over the next few days, and see if I can place a hidden face and use Glue to Any to align them to faces in other orientations.
And perhaps make them all into a Dynamic Component, with options to select screw length, and rotate hole and screw when they need it.
That I didn’t know, @DaveR. Thanks for pointing it out. I don’t often use a CutlList extension, but when I do, I’ll try to remember that, rather than just wondering why some boards aren’t listing!
Do the ones you know ignore hidden components, or ones on layers/tags that are turned off? If so, you could just hide or turn off a layer or layers/tags assigned to the holes and screws.
[Edit] And if you make the hole and screws into ‘Fixings’ or equivalent in CutList(s) extension options, they’ll get ignored when listing wood or sheet materials, and listed separately.[/Edit]
I can foresee another hour or two of experiment looming!
I’ve thought of a few other refinements too, while writing here, and experimenting in a test model. Will pursue, but no promises about delivery date, though I hope within days rather than weeks. Still recovering from a nasty and persistent bug which has lasted since before Christmas. Head cold and cough are the symptoms, and they are just taking AGES to wear off.
I agree that the bounding box of the container object stays large even when the screws are assigned a non-visible tag, but the dimensions of the board are reported correctly by CutList because it reports the most deep object in the nest and ignores the ones that are not visible. Maybe I missed the point?
Getting back to the original topic. We started with a component and a group object. The process for integrating these objects is described above.
Once the component is combined with the group, what do we have? Is the component still editable? The pocket hole on the right was combined using solid tools - subtract. The left component used the interface faces - with selection option.
When I examine the final product, rectangle (group) with the two components (pocket holes), can I edit the individual components. As I open the group, it appears that the components are now not identifiable as components or groups. I say this because when I can select all the geometry that make up the pocket hole, I have the option to create either a component or group.
What am I missing? Did the components lose their identity after integration? Any ideas or comments? Thanks …
I think we are working at cross purposes, when you explode something it is nolonger a group or component.
Using Intersect faces to combine raw geometry within the context of a group/component edits that g/c but doesn’t mean the edited geometry is part of the origin g/c. It is now part of the new g/c.
In this case you have edited the pocket into the block and it has become part of that group, the pocket component should still be in the component browser unchanged.
Box, thanks for the reply. Not sure I understand the “cross purposes” statement.
So, are you saying in this case, that after the explode command, the pocket hole is no longer a component in the group? And therefore, not selectable and editable in the newly modified group.
What about the pocket hole integration with solid tools? Is the pocket hole still a separate component once integrated with the group.
New to SU, so still trying to understand the basics.
Once exploded it is no longer a component, but it can be edited because it is just geometry. Everything is just edges and faces, we wrap them as groups and components to stop them sticking together. Once a single group or component is exploded it is nolonger that group or component, it is just raw geometry. If that raw geometry is contained within another G/C with other Raw Geometry it will combine with that geometry and become part of That group.
No, it is now edges and faces that have merged with the rest of the edges and faces of the group.
You can ‘Nest’ Groups and Components. That means you can have multiple G/C wrapped up inside other G/C. But that is a whole other issue.
It probably is. I summarise it here, and have now made a separate topic, and linked to it - see below.
I’ve done some more work on making Kreg pocket hole components, in three variants.
All of them should be inserted into the editing context of a component or grouped board.
A pocket hole component, which will Glue to Any face, and Cut Opening. After placement, with rotation if needed, explode it to merge its geometry into the board if you need to. It will not expand the bounding box of the board, whether exploded or not.
The same pocket hole component, with the addition of a 3D low poly Kreg screw head. If you decide you don’t want the screw head to show, hide it, delete it, or assign a layer/tag to it and turn its visiibility off. This component will also not change the bounding box of the board in which it is inserted.
The same pocket hole component, this time with the addition of three lengths of Kreg screw, with the same 3D screw head, and 2D Face Me screw shanks in three different length. The screw length is selectable by Dynamic Component options in a drop down list of lengths: 30mm (1 1/4"), 38mm (1 1/2") and 53mm (2"). This one can’t usefully be exploded.
To use, import one or more of these components into your model, open a board for editing, and drag one of the components into the board, placing its origin (marked by a guide point) on the edge of the board.
Rotate about the guide point, in the plane of the board surface, if necessary to align the hole correctly.
The first or second type can be exploded to merge the geometry int the board.
Unfortunately, I found that mirroring a component to the other end of the board seems to destroy the Cut Opening behaviour.
Now that (I think) I have debugged the components, after several times losing the Cut Face behaviour or the DC options not working, I’ve uploaded them to the 3D Warehouse.
Thank you! I had quite a bit of fun doing it, with several very frustrating hiccups, when the Cut Opening behaviour would disappear from a saved copy. Or the DC version would lose its top level Component Options.
Takes several steps to go from designing the component in SU2020, then trying to save it back to SU2014 without losing its component wrapper, or wrapping it twice.
