Mirroring screws up every thing

[TimB]

I have an extrusion and added ribs. To make it easy on my self I did one side and I'm trying to mirror it to the other. I have had nothing but problems

1 It distorts the image
2 It replicated the lines so it had a copy of each on top of the first
3 It crashes

This is doing my head in, I get nothing but problems with Alibre when I try and do anything but the simplest drawings. I'm losing faith in the product.

Attached is the offending drawing, any feed back appreciated

 

[neilr]

I am not sure what it is you are trying to mirror....... maybe include the mirror operation in the part so we can see what it is exactly you are trying to do.

 

[ASP]

... include the mirror operation...

and what version of AD you use.

I tried mirroring the part - without any problems
I tried feature mirror - without any problems

 

[TimB]

This my version info

Date: 15 November 2011 23:00:55
Alibre Design™ Personal Edition 2012
Alibre Design Version:[ PRODUCTVERSION 14,0,1,14047 ] 32-bit

Attached is what happens when I do a mirror.

Selected all / Mirror / axis on the ref line (7)

Thanks

 

[TimB]

Feature mirror worked,

It will mean I can give a drawing for a proto to be made.

Still not impressed with how it screwed up the part in the last example

 

[DavidJ]

It's usually easier / more reliable to break things down into a larger number of very simple sketches.

Complex sketches are easy to break, and a nightmare to go back and edit.

If there is a choice between creating some particular geomtry in a sketch, or as separate 3D feature (e.g. radius, fillet, pattern, mirror) it is often preferable to use the 3D features (these can easily be edited later, the same is not always true of the equivalents in 2D sketches).

 

[TimB]

The issue I have is that the basic part is very simple. No problem drawing it extruded well.

I needed to add the ribs on it and came to the forum as I was having problems. You cannot get a external 3D features ( the ribs) to follow the contour. The only method is snap circles on the line, dimension the gaps then trim the parts lines to prevent overlaps.

If I had made the ribs as a separate 2d drawing then I would have had to chop up all the circle again. It is handy to know that its better to do it in loads of little bits though.

I have to say that I spend more time trying to make Alibre work than producing drawings. I have so many scrapped drawings some of them for complete jobs because at the last moment it decides it give the part an empty shell. The reason for which I have no idea.

Its only because its reasonably priced that I stick with it. Being self employed I cannot afford the serious money asked for by the like of Solid works.

 

[DavidJ]

Once you have used the mirror command in the sketch, it is difficult for us to see what is original and what was mirrored - can only really guess about this. I can't tell if some issues I see are due to 'pilot error' or some peculiarity of the way Alibre works.

You could put the ribs in a separate feature - you can project the curved edge of the original extrusion as a starting point for your sketch of the ribs, then use your outlined method to place the circles and trim. Note that Alibre doesn't mind if 3D features overlap - you may not have to do as much trimming as you suspect.

Some other packages may have tools that make certain aspects easier, but the basic prinicples are the same in most of them - don't assume it would work lots better in SW or any other package just because it is more expensive.

 

[TimB]

" it is difficult for us to see what is original and what was mirrored" the file is in my first post.

I know I can place it on a new sketch and copy the profile to work with from the original. But at the time I modified on the original sketch. Its a big pain doing all those circles and even though my PC is not really a workstation its pretty fast and you have to wait 5 seconds for it to catch up as the circle sizes snap to the previous which snaps to the previous etc etc. The point being after 20 mins of drawing circle you try and make what you have work.

Point taken about the more expensive packages.

It worked with mirror feature so now I'm happy and moved on. Thanks for the support

Cheers

Tim

 

[DavidJ]

Tim - I downloaded the file earlier. but when opening the sketch it is difficult to work out which lines are original and which mirrored (particularly near the page centre). As you described there are some duplicate lines, so it's tricky to work out what was there first. You can't roll back the mirror command in a skecth once it has been closed (another advantage of feature mirror). Without having the original available it's tricky to say what went wrong for you with the mirror.

I was pointing out that (with hindsight) not modifying the original would have been smarter - just project the necessary parts of it to allow you to place the ridges in a separate feature.

 

[neilr]

It would be nice if the pattern feature would allow for following a ref line ...