Transcription
In this tutorial, you will create a parametric gridfinity profile easily. You will also learn how to utilize a conditional argument to prevent your model from breaking. Stay tuned to the end to see how to use this design to create a custom holding solution for pliers. Welcome to the learn it channel. Let's make a gridfinity profile.
So, the first thing we'll do is go into our document settings and make sure we've changed to metrics. So just hover over that, hit the little symbol, and we can go to millimeters and go okay. We could also set default if we want.
So the next thing we're going to input some parameters. The first parameter, let's create height, and we'll just specify this as 5 mm just for fun. Now I'd like to create another parameter here that helps our model to not break if we accidentally put a value in that's too small. And so to do this, we're going to create what's called a conditional argument. So let's say height conditional. Now, if we look at gridfinity's website, we can see that the minimum distance that's needed is 4.75 mm. But I would like to do it so that the minimum distance has to be 5 mm or above. And the way that we do this is we create an if statement. So let's type in if. And we say, if the height is less than 5 mm, then make it 5 mm. But if not, make it the height value. So again, if this height that we're going to input right here is anything less than 5 mm, then the actual value is going to be 5 mm. No matter what we put, 4, 3, 2, 1 mm here, it will force it to be five. However, if it's greater than 5 mm, then it will be with whatever we've specified in our height. So let's go okay. And I'll show you what this looks like. So anything greater than that right there, anything greater than five is going to be updated in the value down here in the height conditional as the same distance. But if I go down to 4 mm, you can see it guarantees it forces it to be 5 mm right there. So this is going to save us from breaking our model again if we accidentally input the wrong value. I'm just going to go 10 mm for now.
Now, next, we're going to also create some user parameters for the amount of rows and columns in our design. So let's specify rows, and then our unit here is going to be no units. And let's just say we're going to have one row for now. We'll do the same thing for columns. And that's all we need to do to get our parameters ready. So let's go okay.
And now we can create a sketch. Let's create it right there. And we're going to create a two-point rectangle. And this is important. And we're going to specify 42 mm in both directions, but we're going to multiply it in our y direction by the number of rows that we'll have. So let's just type in rows. And then our x dimension, we'll do the same thing. We'll say 42 mm times the amount of columns. That's perfect. Let's go okay. And that will settle that. And we can just finish our sketch right now. So we have 42 mm by 42 mm. And our rows here, if we were to type in two, you can see that our entire sketch expands. So does our columns. And we can specify whatever we want there. Let's just bring it back down to one just to make sure that our next step in this tutorial is easier for us to do. So let's go okay.
And now I can extrude this. And let's just go down the total height and make sure to specify our height conditional plus in this instance 4.75. So I've gone negative value. You can see negative height conditional plus 4.75. If this is a positive value for you, still going downwards, then make sure you go negative 4.75 there. And so what we're going to do, the reason why we're doing that is the 4.75 mm is going to be the actual profile that makes the gridfinity system work.
So let's uh, let's go to our next step, which is creating the profile geometry on the bottom. So create a new sketch. We'll do this on the bottom here. And we'll create a two-point rectangle, just like that. And now I'm going to specify because all of our dimensions are based off of the origin. I'm going to specify this dimension to be 0.25 mm and this dimension to be 0.25 mm as well. And to force them to be the same, I'm just going to click right there. And now they'll always be the same. If I update this, the other one will update as well. So let's just go back to 0.25. And then the total distance of our profile is 41.12 mm. And the same thing over here. I'm just going to click that. And that's going to be 41.12 mm. So you can see that our profile is snuggled in from the outside perimeter by 0.25 mm, which is looking great. So let's go finish sketch. And now because we've based it off of the origin, if we change the parameters to a different amount of rows or columns, you can see that our main profile will stay nested right there, right based off of our origin, which is perfect. So let's just go back one and one.
And now we're going to extrude this by 4.75 mm. Just wanted to take a moment to mention our sponsor PCB way. Let's say you'd like to make this profile part, but you don't have a 3D printer or CNC machinery. Well, PCB way has got you covered. Just visit their website, drag and drop your file, and then select the material. If you select any of the metals in the list, you will automatically be quoted for CNC work. I had my custom safety razors manufactured by PCB way, and they did a great job. Thanks, PCB Way.
At this point, let's continue to edit our profile. So we're going to put in a fillet on all four edges over here. And this is going to be 7.5 diameter. For some reason, they've specified this as a diameter rather than a radius. So I'm going to divide it by two. There we have it.
Now, we're going to do something fun. I'm going to create a construction plane, a mid plane right here. And I'm going to create it right down the center of this profile. And again, these faces are not based off of the total dimension or total parameters of our gridfinity solution here. So if I go two and I go two, you can see that the midplane is still there because we've designed this properly. So I can go right back to one. I can just leave it at two right now. And you can see that nothing should be influenced by this midplane.
Now let's create a sketch on this midplane. And this is really cool. Here we can go to slice in our sketch palette, and that slices it right down that construction plane that we've created. Now I'd like to utilize all this geometry. So I'm going to press P for project, and then make sure bodies is selected. We're going to select this entire body and go okay. And now if we hide the body, you can see that all that geometry is retained. And again, we can use this to create the rest of our profile.
Let's create a line that spans from there to there. And then we can also create a line that's at the midpoint. So let's pick the midpoint and make sure that this is vertical. That will also select the midpoint right there. Great. Now we can use this midpoint to specify some of our other dimensions of our profile. But let's do that. We're just going to draw the basic profile. Just like that. And now let's continue to specify what we need to. So these two angles are parallel. What is the angle? It's going to be 45°. And as you can see on our drawing through gridfinity, this dimension is 4.75. We can turn this into a reference or driven dimension here. We're going to pick those two and call this 2.15. And our last dimension is from this point to that line, and we're going to call it 0.8.
So now that our profile is done, we can go over to create and we can go sweep. Let's pick this profile. Turn on the body. And then our path is going to sweep all the way around just like that. And it's going to cut it out by default. Now, just to confirm, we can pick these fillets right there, those reds. And you can see in the bottom right of our screen, 1.6. This is half of the radius value on our gridfinity design reference there. Again, it specifies a diameter dimension, which is not really correct, but we work with it. It says 3.2 diameter, which is 2 times the radius. And then this one as well is 0.8. And on our drawing, it says 1.6 diameter. So this is looking great.
Now, all we need to do is we can pattern rectangular pattern these features that we've copied out, and it will automatically combine or join it to the rest of our body. So let's pick the sweep, let's pick the fillet, and let's pick the extrude. All three of those in our timeline. And now our axes, I can just grab that one. Bring it to the right. And then let's specify what this is supposed to be. It's supposed to be minus 42. Now make sure spacing is selected up here. And then we're going to go the number of columns in this direction. Let's grab the arrow and do the same thing for rows. So 42. And then our rows right there. And this will automatically combine it all. But we have to go to optimize. Let's go okay.
And now we can see that these four are all updated. And this is dependent on our parameters here as well. So if we do three rows, there we have it. We go four columns, you can see everything is updated automatically. However, we need a couple things to be adjusted before we proceed. So this shouldn't be 42 mm from the center of these to the outside because then there's not enough tolerance in between the walls. We'd like the spacing and this to be 42 mm and there be no gap on the inside. But at this point, what we need to do to correct it is just go press pull and pick these four outer faces and we're going to bring it in 0.25 mm. Now that makes it nice and even. Everything is still spaced 42 mm. But this way, once we put these profiles into our gridfinity system and we uh, have another one off to the side that they won't bump into each other or interrupt each other.
So here we go. Let's just use the fillet command for these four edges. And this is 7.5 divided by two as well. So there, there is our complete gridfinity profile system that's easy to adjust. And let's just make sure one more time. Rows is going to be two. Here we can change the columns to six. And we've got ourselves a system. And everything is based off of the origin being right there. So again, I can change everything and it will always go in the positive value in our first quadrant that we've created on our sketch plane.
Now, we can also change the height. So let's just guarantee this. So we can change it to 15 mm. There it's expanded a little bit more. Let's go to 20. That's looking great. However, if we go anything less than five, well, there it's not going to break. And if we didn't have that specification, well, then obviously this extrude would cause some issues with this bottom profile. So that's the benefit of using a conditional argument as a parameter.
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