table pattern

[John.Pryal]

Hi guys,

i have been trying to get the following to work for the last 4 hours, without success. I am trying to table pattern some holes in a tube. I have attached an example, here you can see the holes i want to patttern, the first row has 8 equally spaced holes, so every 45 degrees. Now i want to create more rows upwards spaced 10mm apart, but i want to vary the number of holes in each row. I just cannot figure this out, the problem appears to be that you just cannot add the number of holes to the table pattern in order to make it a variant. Any ideas?

Regards

John

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[BrentDrysdale]

Hi John,

If I understand you correctly you want your eight equi-spaced holes at the first level and different numbers of equi-spaced holes in the 10mm offset rows. I can see if you use a pattern of a pattern then you will not get to choose individual holes to leave out, only whole rows.

If this is the case you might try a nested pattern (have not tried this myself. I would try making my first hole then patterning this at your 10mm spacing. Then I would try to make axial patterns of individual holes in the first pattern. Quick to try at least.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Brent

[BrentDrysdale]

Hi John,

I just tried this myself (I was curious) in WF5. For the second pattern the pattern icon is grayed out but if you go to the Edit menu you will see that there is a Geometry Pattern option and this will do what you want. Of course if you have a line of holes from your first pattern and that may not be desirable however you can use other techniques to change this such as the old angled datum on the fly and use the angle and the direction to make a spiral initial pattern.

Hope this helps.

Good luck.

Brent

[John.Pryal]

Hi Brent,

thank you for the reply. The geometry pattern info is useful to know, but in this instance, dose not work well for me. The problem seems to be if any of these holes intersect one another then the pattern fails. The example i posted was just for the purpose of explaining what i was trying to achieve, the internal bore of my tube can be as little as 2.5mm dia & so the axial holes intersect causing the pattern to fail. Also, the disadvantage is i having so many patterns, instead of just one. What i fail to understand is why the number of holes in a pattern, cannot be added as a table dimension, thus making it a variant.

Regards

John

[Kevin]

For a table pattern you specify the feature location and size dimensions of each individual instance in the pattern or pattern dimensions. Another option might be to determine how the angles relate in each row (for instance if you had four holes in the second row you could create a two direction hole pattern with the angle specified as 45 degrees) and deselect the holes you don't want in the pattern.