Hello,

It would be very helpful to have a wall thickness tool for parts that are to be molded.

Maybe a flag or indicator for the region of the part could be available!

Best,

PRP

It's for 3D printing, where bureaus set minimum wall thicknesses as a limit on what can be successfully printed

As I understand powerpack print tools are only for analyzing an object. Thickness feature only shows places that are too thin for printing. Not more. @PRP probably means a shell tool.

Indeed shell tool works great with simple forms. But more or less complex objects are an irresistible obstacle for shelling. This applies to all VC's solid utilities.
In 90% of cases it does not work(I mean organic forms not primitives). Often it works with extremely small values. For example 0,1mm. But this is too thin wall for printing. ;)

Edited by user Wednesday, October 24, 2018 3:00:32 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Hi All,

Sorry to be late in response to your thoughtful comments. I am referring to molded parts. I do many 3D prints in the prototyping phase, but my wall thickness issues are with the molding process.

Plastic injection molded parts typically have a specified wall thickness. Where the thickness is reduced, the hot plastic melt has a higher resistance to flow and can result in thinner areas where the mold is not completely filled, and even voids where plastic never actually flows into that part of the mold.

Where the walls are thicker (effectively at wall junctions, etc.) the plastic takes longer to harden and typically results in 'sinks' where the cooling plastic shrinks and causes a dimple on the outer side of the wall.

So it is important to strive for constant wall thickness which also helps in the reduction of cycle time.

It is difficult to design constant wall thickness in very complex 3D parts. The tray image attached has complex traps designed to quickly capture pills to deliver exactly 7 pills into a weekly pill organizer. The design of those areas is messy, much too complex for the Thicken Wall tool.

The second image is a wall thickness tool at Shapeways. It shows that my part has some areas that are thin with respect to 3D printing standards, and what I am requesting in ViaCad is a similar tool but would hopefully indicate thickness throughout the part, probably a color display. If a central surface were generated, distances from all points on that surface to the outside surfaces of the part would be very helpful for designing parts to be injection molded.

I haven't found rockyroad's suggested Thickness tool in Powerpack; is that in a Shark version of Powerpack?

I normally use two infinite planes located close together, one rotated 180° and both set as clip planes. Two of these on the left of the object while viewing with two viewport layouts. As the two selected infinite planes are moved up and down, the wall thickness can be viewed. To scan vertically, use two infinite planes above the object and scan horizontally.

This tool is not in Powerpack. Window-->3D Print Tools

Digitalphaser - Thanks! The 3D Print tool does what I needed. From my Shapeways "thin areas" image I was concerned about just how thin...

So with the VC 3D Print tool I set thickness to .020, no region showing that thickness. worked up to thickness 0.035 found the same areas the Shapeways image found. Great tool I hadn't seen before!

Isn't offset the function you want for the curves? It should do what you're doing manually? Another way to generate the solid is by extruding your upper surface downwards in z, the lower surface extruded upwards, the two extrusions intersected.

No, l meant extrude the surfaces that you've lofted from your curves, PunchCAD extrudes surfaces/faces as closed profiles, the result is a solid with the silhouette of the face/s as the profile, capped both ends with the face/s. Solids made that way can be intersected. You can sweep and revolve surfaces, too, or use them as cutout or protrusion profiles.

Edited by user Monday, October 29, 2018 7:39:11 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Is your goal to match the profiles? Why not just duplicate the surface? Trying to follow what is the problem.


In the sample provided, you indicated that you widened the profiles. Not only do I see that but also the profiles where shifted so obviously they won't match if that is your goal. When you shift, it is obvious that the peaks of one gets closer to the other peak and the thickness will diminish.

Edited by user Tuesday, October 30, 2018 7:46:45 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Hello Rockyroad,

You're exactly right. Sorry about my unclear term 'match'. What I mean is matching a suggested bottom surface made somehow, to my green bottom surface made from my bottom profiles.

To clarify directions, see my image of the aqua colored tray of post #7. The 3 axes are shown there and we see very steep gradients in the 'y' direction and also the 'x' direction, and in many regions in both directions at the same spot.

If you just copy/drag down the top surface you get the desired 0.050 thickness in totally flat areas. But in areas with steep gradients in the 'y' direction you need to shift the bottom profile in the 'y' direction. This is seen in your observation of some bottom (green) profiles wrt corresponding top profiles. Where the gradient is negative you need to shift to the right in a right side view, and left if the gradient is positive. Without these shifts the final wall thickness is reduced as you point out.

But we also have steep gradients in some regions in the 'x' direction which requires WIDENING a bottom profile wrt its corresponding top profile, otherwise the thickness of the part will be reduced right in the region where the 'x' gradient is steep. Picture a case where the 'x' gradient along a top profile approaches 90°. Just shifting the top profile down 0.050" in that area causes the wall thickness to approach zero.

See my next post that illustrates this 'x' direction issue.

Thanks for your thoughtful discussion!

PRP