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zmueller4-Participant
4-Participant
March 24, 2020
Question

Scale model in Creo 4

  • March 24, 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 6365 views

I have a question. I am having trouble finding out if there is a way to scale a simple a model in Creo 4. My issue is that I would like to use my original model as the "default" of 1 and be able to scale it from there, but being able to scale it back to "1" whenever I need to. The only ways I know of are:

 

1.) Use "Scale model", then use a calculator to find out how to get back to your original scale of "1"

2.) Set all dims in a relation of original value multiplied by a "Scale" parameter (which would take me a long time to set up since I have 70-100 dims in my model

3.) Use "Scale model", then Save As as a separate model

 

We are taking a model and running several simulations on it, finding an optimum result. Our analyst would like to just take the model and use a scale factor, so he will be running several iterations, using many scale factors. Any help would be great!

3 replies

B
23-Emerald III
BenLoosli23-Emerald III
23-Emerald III
March 24, 2020

Option 3 is the best.

No chance of messing up your full-scale design model.

We use that method for our SLA scale models.

Z
zmueller4-ParticipantAuthor
4-Participant
March 25, 2020

Thankfully, I can easily use 2 of my 3 options without too much fuss. The analyst said he can keep moving forward with those for the time being. I appreciate your response. Thank you!

P
Pettersson15-Moonstone
15-Moonstone
March 26, 2020

Out of curiosity, what method did you end up using?

P
Pettersson15-Moonstone
15-Moonstone
March 24, 2020

You could write a relation that calculates the appropriate value to scale by so you don't have to bring out the calculator every time. It'd be nice if you could then make a mapkey that copies this value and scales the model back to 1, but unfortunately, mapkeys can't copy and paste values. 😞 You can do it with an API, though. i've been playing around with the VB API lately, and you can do all sorts of cool things to control Creo from Excel. This would be a piece of cake to do in VBA.

 

Barring that, though, i think the best you can hope for is a mapkey that brings up the parameter value and pauses so you can copy it yourself, then when you unpause, launches the scale model command to let you paste the value.

tbraxton
22-Sapphire II
tbraxton22-Sapphire II
22-Sapphire II
March 24, 2020

If you have access to the mold design extension you can add a shrink feature to the model. Using this feature you can scale the model and modify the scale factor parametrically and suppress the feature to return to 1:1 scale.

 

Make sure to put this feature at the end of the model as it applies to everything above it in the feature history.

 

The two methods of applying shrinkage are:

Shrink by dimension—Allows you to set up one shrink coefficient for all model dimensions, and specify shrink coefficients for individual dimensions. You can choose to apply shrinkage to the design model.

Shrink by scale—Allows you to shrink the part geometry by scaling it with respect to a coordinate system. You can specify different shrinkage ratio for the X-, Y-, and Z-coordinates. If you apply shrinkage in Mold (Cast) mode, it applies only to the reference model and does not affect the design model.

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Pettersson15-Moonstone
15-Moonstone
March 24, 2020

Good point! You could do that with the Warp feature (transform operation), too, if you don't have the mold design module.

tbraxton
22-Sapphire II
tbraxton22-Sapphire II
22-Sapphire II
March 24, 2020

I have not used it recently but I think all of the warp functions are based on the use of drag handles to manipulate the geometry. This is not easy to precisely control geometry dimensionally. I would also be sure to check the geometric integrity of scale using warp, it could distort geometry such that it could affect simulation results which is the intention of the user in the original post.

 

If you can now scale on all 3 axes using a scale factor with a warp transform, I would be interested to understand how that is realized.

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