Extrude Cut

Hi Guys, New to the forum, so thanks in advance for the help. I'm returning to autodesk products after many years to jump on the 3d printing bandwagon.

I'll have a couple of newbie questions while I find my feet.

I want to be able to cut out a bit of an object, which I will print separately, and then slot back in. Similar to how a joint may be constructed.

I have managed to cut out the rectangle using an extrude cut, but I can't seem to manage to "paste" the piece that I have cut out, to slot back in later. Any idea how I can do this?

thanks...

I have managed to cut out the rectangle using an extrude cut,..

Split or Sculpt, not Extrude

http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?85808-Inventor-101

http://home.pct.edu/~jmather/content/DSG322/Inventor%20Tutorials/Inventor%202011%20Tutorial%2014.pdf

Attach your *.ipt file here and end all doubt.

Hi JD,

thanks for that. It led me in the right direction. I tried sculpt bounded by 6 planes (would have been much nicer to be able to extrude from on plane, as in the extrude function, but OK). I can't quite figure out how to just get the torus segment I want. When I sculpt planes 4 8 9 10 11 12, why does it select the other side of the torus as well?

Once I click on OK in the sculpt, how do I retrieve the piece that I have sculpted?example.ipt

You are doing wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much work.

None of those workplanes are needed. Sculpt is not the solution in this case - Split or Extrude are the obvious solutions.

First thing I noticed is that Sketch1 is not constrained.

I recommend that you start here

http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?85808-Inventor-101

or

Here is another example.

If you are going to 3D print - you will have to do some additional work for clearance as we can't make perfect parts. (Extrude-cut or Thicken-cut the clearance.)

(Attached is example with a bit of clearance.)

There are other possible solutions depending on your design intent (for example - drafted angle sides).

Example_JD.ipt

Thanks again JD.

I'll go through and follow your 101 as it seem to have a lot of the basics covered.

As to the problem, how did you get the move-body to move the extrusion? When I move a solid, it moves the cut.

What sort of an extrusion was it? It looks like an asymmetric cut, but it didn't cut.

thanks,

....

...how did you ...

What sort of an extrusion was it? ...

All is recorded in the history tree. The master of Inventor must first master reading of the history.

HI JD the link you posted on post number 4 is broken?

Fixed (I think).

Works for me now (it also didn't work for me before)

For those following the thread I'll post what JD wanted me to forensically glean from his model.

To be able to cut out some material from an object and move this volume to be printed separably, it seems you need 2 extrudes. The first is an extrude to "make new solid", which defines the piece to be cut out. I extended it to the next plane. The next extrude is an extrude cut, based on the same sketch dimensions as the first extrude, which cuts the hole to the same shape. A "move body" of the first extrusion can then remove the piece.

I still had issues where I would have liked to find a more elegant solution. I could find no way to copy the sketch on which I based the extrusion to the second extrude, so I had to manually re-draw the sketched rectangle. Not too arduous, but a potential source of error, especially if you change dimensions at some stage. Even better would be basing the two extrusions on the same sketch, which I also found no way of doing. This is probably where I spent the majority of my time, thinking that it could all be done based either on one extrude, or one sketch.

Thanks again for your help JD.

You can right click on a sketch and turn on Visibility to Share or reuse the sketch.

Similarly - you can create multiple profiles in one sketch and Share Sketch to use as needed for multiple features.

You can also Project Geometry from one sketch to another to keep parametrically tied together.

Tomorrow I will post another example using your file.

I recommend that you go through the Tutorial thread linked earlier.