Apply holes normal to surfaces from a set of data points. 1

[eng426]

Hi,

I have a airplane wing which I have to place holes (.052 dia. x .090 deep) in normal to the surface at approximately 100 places. The random data points are in a XYZ chart in excel. The holes will be placed all over the wing such as the top, bottom and leading edge. I do not want to do this manually since there are so many points but I realize there may not be a totally automated way. As long as the method is not too operator intensive I would be happy.
I have just purchased the UG cad package but have not recieved it so I am definitely new to this (currently an Inventor ab-user!) My salesman showed me that it can be done but stated that I would need to purchase consulting to see how they did it...Great, after spending thousands of dollars.. (They brought the points in by generating a "spline"?, apparently using the points with a generated work plane at each location? and then deleted the spline when they were done - I guess), editing points later on?
Needless to say if anyone could let me know how to do it ,(ideally with some steps explained for a new user), I would be very appreciative!!! (and hope to return the favor to someone else someday!)
Looking forward to any replies. Thanks in advance!

Vince

 

[eng426]

Oh I forgot to mention this would also be holes applied to an assembly.

 

[Azrael]

Considering that the holes will be applied on several parts I would make a seperate model and create the tools there (ie cylinders) and wave them to the different parts for subraction.

This is my suggestion if anybody has improvment please chip in.

1) Start with a new model and use "wave geometry linker" to link in the wing skin.
2) Create a sketch with points describing the hole positions.
3) Use associative project in vector direction to project the point on the wing skin.
4) Offset the wing skin a smaller distance
5) Project, associative, normal to surface, the point of the initial wing skin to the offseted surface.
6) Tie the corrensponding points with a spline, use the associative spline through points function and toggle on single spline segment.
7) Use edit arc length with association and turn on "both ends", toggle incremental and set to 2*0,090. This is you you don´t have to worry in whitch direction it will grow.
8) Use tube on the lines created in point 7 and set major dia to 0,052 and minor to 0.
9) Save

This is now your drill to to be applied on the parts. Just open the part you want to drill and add this part through the assembly meny and link it with wave.

Hope it help

 

[eng426]

Azrael,

Thank you for help! Since I am not a UG user yet this may be an "off" question, In "Inventor" a sketch defines a 2D workplane where one builds geometry etc. My data points are in 3D space. Will this sketch as you spoke of containing the cylinders be able to be generated as you described for all randomly positioned and angled cylinders from the data set? Will these cylinders be useable on an assembly? Wave? a UG function I would assume? Also how would you generate these cylinders from an Excel worksheet of data points? Does your method allow the "global" subtraction of cylinders from the assembly or would one have to go to each cylinder and do a number of steps on each to get it to be a hole? If so then maybe those steps could be saved as a macro? Thanks so much for your assistance. I am looking forward to gettting the UG software, learning it and trying this method you described!
Vince