• Home
  • Products
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • About
  • Future Products
  • Cadquery
Parametric Products, LLC Store

blog

Parametric Parts: Extrusions and Steel

7/30/2016

 
Picture
Parametric design really shines when geometry has an infinite number of possible combinations.

For quite a few parts, it is easy to import pre-defined geometry as a STEP file.  Most CAD systems have systems that allow easily importing libraries of parts in a variety of formats.

Some parts, though, cannot be pre-generated, because they can be customized.

AISC Structure steel shapes are in this category.  The profiles are standard, but length is arbitrary, so it is not feasible to simply import a static, pre-defined 3D model. 

Picture
Typically, you import a 2d shape, and then use that to create the 3D shape.  

That's doable, but it is quite a few steps.


Using a parametric tool, you can do it all in one step.
​Select the profile, supply a length ( or even an offset face in your existing project), and you're off and running:

As it turns out, there are quite a few sets of parts like this. Another good example are aluminum extrusions from 8020 inc.  The profiles are pre-defined, but the length is not.   A bit of code makes it super easy to create all of the possible parts:
Picture
Picture
We've created Onshape generators for these two geometries.  You can download them here 

Comments are closed.

    Dave Cowden

    Developer and owner of Parametric Products, LLC

    Archives

    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016

    Categories

    All
    Features

    RSS Feed

Copyright (c) 2016 Parametric Products, LLC. All rights reserved.
  • Home
  • Products
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • About
  • Future Products
  • Cadquery