Global Analysis to report minimum distance between many holes

[LawrenceS]

We deal with manifolds which have many through holes/ports where some intersect and some are close. It would be useful to be able to do a global check (on the entire manifold model) to see what the minimum distance is between hole surfaces (Outside diameter) and then report the location so that we know if the distance must be increased in order for the material to remain structually sound, Currently we have to eyeball which portings/holes are close than manually measure the distance between them.

We don't currently have a Mechanica liscence but would like to know if this can be done with or without it. So basically:

1. Can this be done without Mechanica? If so How?
2. Can this be done with Mechanica? If so How?

It seems like Model Check or Geometry Check could do this also but I have not yet found out how. Can these tools be used? If so how?

I was told that several years back ProE had a tool that sectioned a block from the front to the back (one slice at a time) and gave a report of distances between holes. We can no longer find this tool.

Thanks for your help!

Lawrence

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[danderson]

Lawrence,

Take a look at the following:

http://communities.ptc.com/thread/34104

http://geomcaliper.geometricglobal.com/Press+Release/Product+News/index.aspx

In regards to mechanica you could apply pressure forces to the passages and run an analysis
to see if the pressure creates stresses above yeild and report the locations. I don't believe Mechanica or Simulation have the ability to check thickness, someone else may be able to correct me on this.

Hope this helps,

Don Anderson

[LawrenceS]

Thanks for the refrences. Yes, it sounds like Mechanica is not going to work. I checked out the link you sent and that way looks about the same as manually measuring the model.

As for Geometric, I have been talking with an employee from Geometric since the PTC2012 conference about DFMPro for use with other manufacturing analysis, and after checking with him it sounds like that DFMPro (and to a greater extent GeomCaliper) will also check min thicknesses. This sounds like it would be a good paid version, however it is surprizing if PTC has not added anything like this to their analysis tools.

It looks like Creo 2.0 has the x-section analysis tool, although I have not found out how to use it and am not sure if it will check all the slivers across a block, or if it just does a single one at a time. Any ideas on how to use this feature or another one that could measure minimum thickness between features?