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  October 29, 2008, 02:24 PM Jay Tedeschi

  While working on this headset assembly last week it occurred to me that a good tip for working with derived parts was staring me in the face. I have a lofted surface that is used to shape the electronics package housing in this assembly. Not wanting to go through the motions of creating a surface like this again for the outer headset housing, it is far easier to use derive to do an associative copy of the face and then offset it for the material thickness of that part.

  

  So, the first thing I need to do is to mark the lofted surface as an exported object. Easy enough… I find the lofted surface in the browser and then from the right click menu I select “Export Object”. I save and am done with this file.

  Now, I start a new part, exit Sketch 1 and then select Derive from the palette.

  

  What’s going on? There are no surfaces to select, even though I clearly marked the lofted surface for export. Well, I actually missed a pretty important step back in the original part. I need to make the surface visible, as well as marking it as an exported object.

  

  So… back to the original part, I find the lofted surface in the browser and from the right click menu I select “Visibility”. Save and close the part, start a new one again, only this time when I run the derive command I see that the Lofted Surface is now selectable from the derive menu.

  

  What would seem to be a minor detail can actually cause you much angst if you are not mindful… so please… be careful out there!

  0 Comment | Add Comment The Gear Box > Tips, Industry News, Inventor 2009, Inventor 2008

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