Is there any automatic way to imprint washers/bolt heads on a face in Discovery?

Javier Vique

For instance, let's assume that we've got a wind blade bearing and the idea is to automatically make an imprint of the bolts holes by an edge offset. That offset is given by a ratio of the hole radius. Image below gives an overview of the final target:

Javier Vique

Below a script developed by @Pierre Thieffry to make that imprint on a selection of faces.

import math

offset_value=1.1 # Size for edge offset (radius*offset_value)
max_radius=60 # in mm, will avoid offsets for any circular edge with higher radius
# For face selection
AllEdges=[]
CircularEdges=[]
EdgeFaces={}
EdgeRadius={}

# Get face selection

selected_faces=Selection.GetActive().GetItems[IDesignFace]()

# Loop over faces to find circular edges
if len(selected_faces)!=0:    
    for face in selected_faces:                        
        for edge in face.Edges:
            try:     # Radius will exist only for circular edges                   
                radius = MeasureHelper.ArcRadius(EdgeSelection.Create(edge))*1e3
                if radius<=max_radius:                
                    AllEdges.append(edge)
                    EdgeFaces[edge]=face
            except:                                
                radius = 0                                    
else:
    pass

# Now loop over circular edges
if len(AllEdges)>0:
    for i in range(len(AllEdges)):        
        edge = AllEdges[i]
        try:
            radius = MeasureHelper.ArcRadius(EdgeSelection.Create(edge))*1e3                
            current_face=EdgeFaces[edge]
            face_sel=FaceSelection.Create(current_face)        
            edge_selection=EdgeSelection.Create(edge)
            # Compute Offset
            offset = float(offset_value)*radius         
            # Create imprint
            direction= MoveImprintEdges.GetImprintDirection(edge_selection,face_sel, False)                    
            options = MoveImprintEdgeOptions()
            result = MoveImprintEdges.Execute(edge_selection, direction, MM(-offset), options, None)            
            # Look at newly created faces to identify which face should be imprinted (when multiple circular edges are on the same face)        
            for check_face in result.CreatedFaces:
                # Face we look for does not contain current edge
                if edge not in check_face.Edges:
                    new_base_face=check_face
            # As face change after imprint, need to update association between edges and faces
            for edge, face in EdgeFaces.items():
                if face==current_face:
                    EdgeFaces[edge]=new_base_face
            i = i + 1
        except:
            print('Issue with Imprints - check for possible overlaps')

Mike.Thompson

This is a great example. I have a few suggestions to make the code more robust if anybody wants to utilize this script at a large scale.

-> You can determine if an edge is a circle or not with: str(E.Shape.Geometry.GetType()).endswith('Circle'). This would be faster than a try/except most likely if you have lots of non-circle edges.

-> You can use the built in functions for unit conversions like "MM", "IN" instead of the factors like 1E3

-> It would be better to group all the imprints that are along the same face into a single imprint operation. Currently the script does each one-by-one, but I think you can imprint multiple edges. Create a block that first identifies the imprints, then group them by face, and do all the edges for that face in a single imprint. This is only for speed with larger models.