Allow a curved surface as a hinge for drafting

[jwagh]

While drafting plastic parts, it would be great to use even a curved surface as a hinge for drafts. This would allow for more surfaces to be drafted at once instead of one at a time for those surfaces that share the same edges.

For example, if the 'base' of this plastic part has a bubble effect and is curved a bit, all surfaces coming up from this surface can't be drafted using this bubbled surface. Instead, the hinge has to be the edges that meet the surface, which slow down the process drastically.

[rsobecki]

could you be so kind and add some screenshots to visualise your examples please?

[dgschaefer]

You can select a chain of edges inside the draft tool.  Select the first edge, hold down shift and select the other edges.

I suspect this will give you what you want.

Still, I voted yes as being able to use a curved surface would be handy.

[jwagh]

Doug & Rowan,

Thank you for your comments. Please see my screen capture below. What we are suggesting is a way to draft all cuts and/or protrusions at once and draft them normal to the curved surface. Doug's suggestion is the correct method, but would only be possible for 1 cut/protrusion at a time. This can be cumbersome and time consuming.

Does this make sense?

[dgschaefer]

For what it's worth, in your example I'd want to create separate drafts for each because it keeps the model more flexible.  However, having the option to do them together would be handy.

[jwagh]

Doug,

Yes, you would have more options available. However, drafting should be secondary to the geometry. If it takes you just as much time to draft than to create the geometry itself, then there should be some improvements. For manufacturing, the engineer knows he may only want a 1deg draft for everything. So why can't he model that? If he selects the hinge from a datum plane, the change in the geometry can be substantial, since the geometry is actually lower or higher based on the curve. However, if they all started at this curved surface, than the change from the 1deg won't be as bad.

[olivierlp]

Hello,

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