Looking for best method of creating Slotted Holes

[w3Leon]

Hello All,
I'm a new user of Atom 3D v24 (I've used TurboCAD for over 12 years) and I'm looking for help with Slotted Holes. I cannot find a Menu Feature in v24 for quickly creating slots. I'm thinking that I will have to create slot sketches from scratch each time I need a slotted hole. Does anyone have a good quick method of creating a slotted hole and/or slotted hole sketch?
Thanks,
Walt

 

[HaroldL]

There is no slot sketch figure in Alibre, although it would be nice if it did.. Alibre Design has some Shapes that create slots but I don't use them much at all.
One quick way would be to create a rectangular slot then radius the ends to 1/2 the slot width as a separate feature. The fillet radius can be tied/linked to the slot width in the equation editor.

 

[w3Leon]

Thanks for the response. Looks like I need to learn more about using the Equation Editor.

 

[HaroldL]

You can find out more about the updated Equation Editor (EE) here and equations in the Help Manual here.

 

[bigseb]

Hello All,
I'm a new user of Atom 3D v24 (I've used TurboCAD for over 12 years) and I'm looking for help with Slotted Holes. I cannot find a Menu Feature in v24 for quickly creating slots. I'm thinking that I will have to create slot sketches from scratch each time I need a slotted hole. Does anyone have a good quick method of creating a slotted hole and/or slotted hole sketch?
Thanks,
Walt

Obround shape is best.

 

[jfleming]

I would draw a rectangle then go back in and fillet it. I posted a little while back about the Obround Shape tool and it's limitaitions:

https://www.alibreforum.com/forum/index.php?threads/obround-shape-tool.23037/#post-153547

 

[simonb65]

... do you even get the 'Obround' tool with Atom ???

Another approach is 'Thin Cut Extruded' (again, not sure if Atom supports Thin Cuts???), it allows you to create compound slots rather than just simple straight slots ...

First, sketch the centre line of your slot(s) ...



Extrude Thin Cut the sketch ...



Then Fillet the internal corners ...



Resulting in ...



In Alibre Design Pro and Expert you can automate the Extrude Thin Cut and Fillet operations using AlibreScript by having a dialog that allows you to select the sketch and slot width.

You can obviously control the depth of the slot in the 'Depth' parameter of the Extrude Thin Cut if you want a guide slot in a plate or represent a routing operation for example ...