CAD Forum

• I drag the feature onto the face/plane
• the preview does not show the correct orientation

• 

• there is no way to 'pre-align' the feature
• when adding a placement dimension I am not able to flip this dimension
• when working without a placement dimension I have to go into the feature & add a dimension which is very cumbersome
• angles usually fail

jcapriotti wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 11:43 am Any external references should have you select them when inserting.

Can you attach the library feature?

berg_lauritz wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 11:31 am I recently got more into trying to properly design library features. So I know that you should try not to use many external references & keep everything as clean as possible.
Now I still do struggle with placing those library features properly and here is one common problem:

• I drag the feature onto the face/plane
• the preview does not show the correct orientation
• Screenshot 2021-10-05 102559.png
• there is no way to 'pre-align' the feature
• when adding a placement dimension I am not able to flip this dimension
• when working without a placement dimension I have to go into the feature & add a dimension which is very cumbersome
• angles usually fail

Is there any way to pre-align the library feature when dragging it in?
What's the best practice on how to flip the dimension? Configurations for the library feature?
How do you tackle this problem?
Did I miss something incredibly obvious? I cannot believe I would be the first to encounter this problem...

Edit: attached the library feature

jcapriotti wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 12:26 pm What do you mean by flip the dimension? I dragged your feature in and selected edges 90° to thee insertion and it rotates the feature as expected.

LibFeature.gif

I wouldn't use dimensions, lock it down to a sketch point. Then add a location sketch prior to the insert to control location. For rotation I added an angle dimension so you can orient it, however you could still use an edge if you prefer.

Here's the library feature, I removed locating dimension and put in a location sketch with a single point. Also added angle.

• Avoid horizontal and vertical relations at all cost if you plan to rotate, use parallel and perpendicular
• Avoid as many relations and dimensions to external features as possible.
• If you have a configurable feature, you can create a global variable and link the dimension to it in the Library feature part. Then having the same global variable in the part will link up the library feature dimensions so you can control several at once.

berg_lauritz wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 2:01 pm A configuration is the other option, correct?

If you have a configurable feature, you can create a global variable and link the dimension to it in the Library feature part. Then having the same global variable in the part will link up the library feature dimensions so you can control several at once.

berg_lauritz wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 2:57 pm sounds very powerful, but SO DANGEROUS!

AlexB wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:20 am I just got into this a couple of weeks ago with adding hydraulic connection ports (library features) to our design library. They don't require rotation like your part, but I learned a lot of lessons about configurations and design tables in library parts.

I expected to be able to use equations to control some of the features within the library part but found that those propagate to the part that they are inserted into which made the equation manager REALLY full of things like THREAD_DEPTH@CosmeticThread1, THREAD_DEPTH@CosmeticThread2, etc. for over 30 ports on the manifold file. This blew up the equation manager and caused a huge headache so I used the design table instead to handle equations with Excel's formulas. It's not pretty but it doesn't break anymore.

There's a learning curve to all of this stuff so I really appreciate the input everyone is giving here because it does and will help with future part setups.

berg_lauritz wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 12:29 pm are you able to post an example for reference purposes, @AlexB ? This is something we will probably start with next year!