My husband and I have gotten way into fishing this year, and keeping treble hooks from getting hung up on literally everything has been quite the task! It seems like if you take your eyes off the hooks for a split second, they'll get stuck into something. This is especially tough if you want to use a bait binder or bag to transport your lures.
In the most recent release for commercial (coming up this weekend for Makers!) xDesign got a huge upgrade under its belt: we can now make design tables and generate part families! If you're accustomed to SOLIDWORKS Design, you might be familiar with these as configurations.
We've had parameters in xDesign for a long time, indeed some really cool options for accessing them. But what if you have a base design that you want to resize? Think about shoes and shirts: they have the same geometric relations and design, but changing a few parameters like length and width make them fit different bodies better. We can do this in xDesign in a few steps:
1. Identify your parameters:
As you can see from the screenshot, I have a variety of parameters governing the distance from the centre of the treble hook to the points (HookRad), another governing the size of wire used to make the hooks (Wire Size), another which indicates the height of the points of the hook from the bottom of the overall piece (Hook Height), the overall height of the treble hook (OAL), and the size of the hook as text (HookSize).
Not every parameter you make needs to be used in the next step, so don't worry about having a bunch to experiment with in your own designs.
2. Create a design table:
In the "Tools" section of the Action Bar, you'll find the "Create Design Table" command. This is where we set up our spreadsheet in xDesign. I just created a row for each size of hook I wanted with the matching specifications.
There are two tabs, the "Configurations" tab in which we set up our desired variants and the "Associations" tab in which we assign parameters in our design to parameters in our design table. For my parameters, I used the dropdown to select "User Parameters" as these are the ones I created and named. If you look in that full menu, though, you'll note that you can assign a great many more parameters than the ones you named!
Numerical values are pretty intuitive, but what if we want to turn features on and off? Assign a parameter labeled "Activity" for the desired feature in the list, and you can turn it on and off with a Boolean ("True" or "False").
We can have these variants all live in one file and simply activate a row in our Design Table to activate that configuration. We can also split them out as separate entities as I did with my hook covers. I wanted to engrave the size on them, and I could not assign a parameter to my engraving
3. OPTIONAL: Create Part Families from Design Table:
When we create our Part Family from a Design Table, we create one additional entity that is called the "Part Family" -- this shows up in our collaborative space, but is primarily just a link between our "master" or base design and the components derived from it. There are two tabs in the Part Family dialog box, the "Setup" and "Family Members" tabs.
In the setup tab, we indicate which design table to use, what to call our Part Family item, where to store that item, and the bookmark where that item will go. By default the family members will go to the same collaborative space as the Part Family item, but we can check the box to store them separately.
With that part done, we can now test our entire design table to ensure we get valid geometry. If the test passes, we can generate a fresh part family! If we need to update the designs, we can increment a new revision after updating the base part.
If you want to scope it out, my 3DXML for download is at the bottom of the screen! I also have STEP files attached as well if you want to 3D print your own. Let me know in our community if you want to see this in action for GoEngineer's Makers to Founders livestreams!
