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Remove Pad versus Pocket

MrCATIA

Super Moderator
Because you can shape your removed body however you want, add drafts, fillets, add different heights of the pockets and still the tree doesn't expand downwards, what you're doing is growing the tree straight to the bottom, and that's a mess. Your model will be very hard to read and modify if it expands like that.


Bouta; I'm curious about your suggestion about not using Pockets in CATIA V5. I've never heard of any problems with using Pockets in CATIA V5. Where did you learn this?

1. Avoiding "tall trees" was a V4 practice to improve performance. I've never heard that with V5. Plus putting the Pad and it's sub-features into a Removed body actually makes the tree taller.

2. You can still add all the same sub-features (drafts, fillets, etc.) when using Pockets.

3. Grouping the sub-features in a body does help with reading the tree and modifying the part, but the sub-features could be added immediately after the Pocket to better organize the tree. (the only advantage to grouping features into a body is when making Patterns with the 'current solid' option)

4. Using the V5 tools like Parents/Children and just clicking on the feature makes it easy to modify a part, regardless of where it's located in the tree.

I'm still using Pockets.
 
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I learned this over my work experience in CATIA. Pockets may be good if you do very simple things like flat with holes. I always sticked to the very basic operations: creating positive solids with pads/thicksurfaces/close surfaces and adding drafts, fillets to them in the same body. Then I can also change it's sign (+ or -) just by changing Add to Remove. When you're not using boolean operations - you can't really collapse the tree, it will always be a chain of operations - arranged pretty randomly if your model starts growing big. Also - if you want to deactivate something or throw it out - everything is more or less in one place. If you want to work separately on one piece of your model that is inside of a body - just use "Only Current Body". Now having this all in one chain - how do you want to modify a part without hiding everything around to make it more clear? I made something silly just for comparison.

With boolean operations - no pockets.

Przechwytywanie.jpg

Without boolean operations - with pockets and stuff.

Przechwytywanie11.jpg

In the first screen - everything is properly arranged, you can obviously name your boolean operations if you want to make it more clear for you.

Using Parents/Children is really not needed in Part Design if everything is arranged correctly. Parents/Children and Quick Select is very helpful though when it comes to surface design.
 
Bouta,

I think I understand. It's not just pockets, but you are referring to using Booleans and Multi-Bodies to model parts. And I have to agree with you, if you are modeling complex parts like castings and plastic housings. I've found this CATIA modeling technique to be very powerful, yet a very easy way to model complex parts and tooling.

But I've also found this technique to be complex and relatively difficult to learn. Especially for non-complex parts, such as machined parts, weldments, etc.

Your original comments were regarding a CATIA tutorial that was recently added to this forum. I believe this tutorial was intended for new users learning the basics of CATIA. Multi-Body solids and Boolean operations are not CATIA basics (neither are surfaces). Pads and Pockets are basic features that should be taught in a basic CATIA tutorial.
 
It may be basic stuff, nevertheless it's good to maintain good habits from the beginning. When I look over some tutorials - simple pads and pockets indeed are ok but just for the really basic and simple parts. But if it comes to just A BIT more complicated ones - changing your element which is built without boolean operations can be very frustrating. What I recommend even for part design is to learn how to build some of your 3D key areas like planar levels, common points and curvers in geometrical sets. Learning this technique might be hard at the beginning but then - your model is more responsive and friendly. I am always open for help if somebody has a problem with learning the basic CATIA tools. I will try to teach how to keep it simple but free of most potential update errors.
 

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