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Best way to create plate with hole pattern


Wimads

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Hi all,

 

I am trying to create a simple perforated metal sheet in vectorworks. 250x350x1mm sheet, 4mm diameter perforations 6mm apart.

 

I basically create an array of cylinders in the pattern I want, and then subtract those from a 250x350x1mm solid. But that means subtracting a few hundred solids, so it takes a while to perform the action(though it does work without crashing) and the subtracted solid then is slowing down my model considerably. I could of course omit the perforations, but I would prefer not to in this case, because other parts of the model depend on it.

Is there any way to do this that requires less resources? 

 

 

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You are best to make a renderworks texture to show the rendered holes. You can do this simply by creating the repeating pattern to scale  on a design layer, making a screen shot of it and  using that as the basis for the transparency shader in a renderworks texture. You will need to use a rudimentary image editor to crop the screen shot to exactly what you need though. This has worked really well for me for all sorts of perforated meshes and other materials where the actual geometry is likely to cause a significant slow down of the Model.

 

Your Texture would look like this:

 

Untitled.thumb.png.5ccbb867f5d6cd1873111dc214df4c79.png

 

image.thumb.png.1f9e9cc5f17bca61a510406d4067f58f.png

 

 

come back with any questions....

 

 

Edited by markdd
  • Like 1
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1 hour ago, Wimads said:

Hi all,

 

I am trying to create a simple perforated metal sheet in vectorworks. 250x350x1mm sheet, 4mm diameter perforations 6mm apart.

 

I basically create an array of cylinders in the pattern I want, and then subtract those from a 250x350x1mm solid. But that means subtracting a few hundred solids, so it takes a while to perform the action(though it does work without crashing) and the subtracted solid then is slowing down my model considerably. I could of course omit the perforations, but I would prefer not to in this case, because other parts of the model depend on it.

Is there any way to do this that requires less resources? 

 

 

 

If you need the 3d geometry I would suggest drawing a rectangle and an array of circles. Use Modify>Clip Surface to remove the circle from the rectangle and then extrude the perforated rectangle. In my experience doing the subtraction in 2d first is a little more efficient than doing later in 3d.

 

Kevin

 

 

Edited by Kevin McAllister
  • Like 3
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3 hours ago, Kevin McAllister said:

 

If you need the 3d geometry I would suggest drawing a rectangle and an array of circles. Use Modify>Clip Surface to remove the circle from the rectangle and then extrude the perforated rectangle. In my experience doing the subtraction in 2d first is a little more efficient than doing later in 3d.

 

Kevin

 

 

I do this too - try to do as much boolean work in 2d as possible before going 3D.

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Another approach which might lower overhead is to make a unit hole and array it:

Start by drawing either a 2d square with a hole, or like @markdd's square with clipped corners. Then . . .

Extrude>Create Symbol>Duplicate array or Array Surface. Resulting array can Add Solids, Deform, etc if nec.

 

Textures would be easiest and scale easily, but can’t fill the edges of the holes so looks bad on thicker extrudes. Also difficult to compute open area, volume, weight. Perf manufacturers publish formulae for that data, so can be plugged into worksheets 

Edited by Benson Shaw
Math
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17 hours ago, Kevin McAllister said:

 

If you need the 3d geometry I would suggest drawing a rectangle and an array of circles. Use Modify>Clip Surface to remove the circle from the rectangle and then extrude the perforated rectangle. In my experience doing the subtraction in 2d first is a little more efficient than doing later in 3d.

 

Kevin

 

 

 

4 hours ago, Benson Shaw said:

Another approach which might lower overhead is to make a unit hole and array it:

Start by drawing either a 2d square with a hole, or like @markdd's square with clipped corners. Then . . .

Extrude>Create Symbol>Duplicate array or Array Surface. Resulting array can Add Solids, Deform, etc if nec.

 

Textures would be easiest and scale easily, but can’t fill the edges of the holes so looks bad on thicker extrudes. Also difficult to compute open area, volume, weight. Perf manufacturers publish formulae for that data, so can be plugged into worksheets 

 

 

2 minutes ago, Benson Shaw said:

Here's v2019 sample 350x250x1 symbol array. 2436 instances in OGL =  2.5 MB

    • Select All>Convert to Group (=2436 Extrudes)>Add Solids (took for EHVEEER) OGL = 220MB !!!

    • Select the Solid Addition>Modify>Convert to Generic Solid OGL = 94MB !!

 

Same sheet made by circles clipped from rectangle then extrude = 16.7MB

 

-B

SymbolArrayv2019.vwx

SymbolArray.png

 

Thanks for the suggestions. Tried all, and eventhough it makes a bit of a difference it is still slowing down my model too much. I'll go with the render texture option I guess, if I really want to show the perforation.

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