Merging Co-axial Holes

Co-axial holes can be recognized as a single hole and machined in a single Drilling operation, either automatically using the Global Feature Recognition command or manually using contextual commands in the Manufacturing View.

Related Topics
Axial Machinable Features

  1. Click Global Feature Recognition in the Axial Machining Operations toolbar.

    The Global Feature Recognition dialog box appears.

  2. Set Selection Type to Body then select the part in the authoring window.

    The feature recognition takes the associated Body object into account.

  3. Select the Hole and One blind hole needed check boxes.



    Note:

    • With the dialog box settings above, through holes can be merged with a single blind hole with the same diameter when the blind hole is the lowermost hole in the hole sequence. For more information about merging co-axial holes, see Co-axial Hole Merge Capabilities.

    • The machining axis of through holes must be the same as or opposite to the machining axis of the blind hole.

  4. Click OK to start the feature recognition process.

    An information box appears giving a summary of the process:



  5. Click Manufacturing View in the Machining Features toolbar. Right-click the Manufacturing View object and select Sort by Machining Features to display the created holes.

    Co-axial holes with same diameter and one blind hole are merged:





    With the dialog box settings above, co-axial holes with same diameter and no blind hole are not merged:







  6. Merge these holes manually using the Manufacturing View, if required.

    1. Right-click one of the selected lines in the Manufacturing View and select Merge Selected Holes.

      The selected holes are merged and are replaced by a new hole (Machinable Axial Feature.71 in this example).



Important: The Propagate for Coaxial Hole contextual command in the Manufacturing View automatically selects multiple holes.

When you select one or more holes and select that command, all the remaining holes with the same axis, diameter, thread parameters, and tolerance parameters as the already selected holes can be selected automatically.

The criteria are checked by the system in order to select (highlight) the co-axial features in the Manufacturing View and on the part. You can then deselect some of the selected holes by clicking on them if you do not want them to be included in merge operation.