Hello Forum Community,

I'm working thru some use case scenarios currently for our future product and I'm wondering if any of you have machined or casted/machine parts that you can share with me under NDA. I'm specifically interested in Designers that employ the best practice of using default datums and min. no. of features in combination with extrude feature and the use of the offset sketch option as well as 2nd direction extrude.  I'm trying make sure that we cover all cases of what designers want out of extrude and your input would be most helpful. In case you're wondering,  I already have a lot of customer models under NDA, but as I study them, I observe that a lot of engineers are very conservative in that they do, for instance, extrude from one face of there model thru all, instead of - extrude thru all in two directions from the default plane. I've also noticed that very few take advantage of the offset sketch option. I even see some designers create two extrudes when they could have done it in one. Perhaps a lot of these models were created before that feature got put in. If you can't share anything right now, at least give me your opinion about how valuable 2nd direction, draft, offset sketch position are to you?

Anyway, here is a list of current optional functionality for extrude in SW:

• Offset sketch position (start sketch at face, vector or offset from current sketch position)
  
• Extrude along a vector
  
• extrude in second direction
  
• Thin feature (extrude open profile)
  
• Draft in 1st and/or 2nd direction
  
• Contour selection
  
• Unmerge (create separate body)
  

If you do have something to share with me, please let me know and I'll arrange to get if from you via our FTP site.

Thanks

Mark