Drawing perf metal without bringing the system to its knees

[HDEAR]

Hi all.

Every now and again I have a need to get perforated metal plates made, normally circular in design. I can go to a company who specialises in these but they have set hole diameters and set staggered lengths ( see pics at bottom ). Often what the companies can provide is not suitable as the driving force for me in the design is a precise open area % yet the actual standard hole sizes and staggered centres offered may not be suitable.

I can got to a laser cutter company and have the sheet laser cut ( and put up wit the distortion ), but to do that, I have to produce a DXF. All those holes bring my HP Zbook to its knees and a typical two-part disc like below ( about 2,000mm OD ) is about an hour's ( or more ) exercise for me. The black bit is just a support flange - nothing to do with the discs I want to make )

So, is there a way in CAXA ( or ICD ) that I could draw the DXF without having the 3Dmodel and not having to painstakingly do staggered rows of holes to fit into the internal dia prescribed? In other words if I drew a semi-circle boundary that the perf pattern should fit into and then somehow magically command the pattern to draw all those little holes in 2D for the DXF ?

Or am I dreaming 

 

 

 

Edited April 7, 2021 by HDEAR

[Josh]

Small feature patterns like these are often painful, it would be lovely if patterning was multi-processor...

Not sure about ICD or CAXA, but have you tried doing this with the new "Fill Pattern" command?
It will still be processor intensive, but once you have it set up it should only require one size change and the holes will all automatically update for you rather than needing to manually copy anything.

You could suppress the pattern when you don't need it to avoid big regen times.

Here's an example if you haven't tried Fill yet:

[HDEAR]

Thanks Josh,

No, I haven't used that fill pattern before. It seems the way to go so I'll go try it.

Yes my almost 2,000mm dia disc would definitely take a bit longer.

Cheers

 

 

 

[HDEAR]

Hi Josh,

It took a couple of goes to get it it right but managed to generate what I wanted using fill pattern. I then layered the outer sheet metal ring direct onto the perf shape and edited the 2D. Then I went into CAXA, used 3D interface, exploded the drawing once it loaded ( was reasonably quick ), took out the original perimeter lines, exported to DXF and here's the result.

Happy camper am I

[SSIMMONS]

Hey Harley,

 

Sometimes with more complicated shapes that give my computer a hard time I will use a sketch in 3D space like this clip:

 

- Spencer

[Josh]

@HDEAR Nice! Great to hear it worked.

Must've been a tiring day for your computer's fan!