Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor – 10 – Sketching the Rails – Continued…
With the layout sketch’s visibility off, the sketch should look like this…
Now to go back in time. There needs to be points in the panel grooves to represent the clearance between the edge of the raised panel and the bottom of the groove. In this case, this clearance is1/8″ on each side and 1/16″ at the top and bottom to allow for the solid wood raised panel to expand and contract without blowing the whole door apart. Both of these parameters can be manually changed based on experience, or a formula can be devised based on the wood species and moisture content at the time of manufacture. what we have generally works quite well though.
To create the points on the stiles, double click on the Stile Profiles sketch in the browser to activate it, then place a point in each of the panel grooves at about center. grab the Horizontal Constraint
tool and click on one of the points, then the center of the line that represents the bottom of the groove. Add a Dimension from that same line to the point, and from the parameters drop down list, choose the Panel_Gap_Sides parameter. Do the same thing on the other side, then add a dimension between the two points. The dimension may give a warning of an over-constrained condition, and ask if you want a driven dimension. If so, click yes (I have it set to always create a driven dimension). Now, open up the parameter list, and look for the Reference Parameters list (in the center between Model Parameters and User Parameters), which will have the one reference parameter that exists so far, the one you just made, with an equation of 8.375 in. change the name in the Parameter Name column from d?? to Panel_Width, click Done to close the parameter list, then finish the sketch and save. Put your cursor over the image below to see the changes.
Now activate the rails profiles sketch and do exactly the same, but remember the constraint to the center of the line is now a vertical constraint, and the parameter is now Panel_Gap_Top. When you change the name of the driven dimension, call this one Panel_Height.
You now have driven dimensions that can be exported to a cut list and many other uses. One of them could be to use as the parameter for the panel extrusion itself, but we will be using the points for that. The revised part with the points and driven dimensions added should look like this…
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