Help with Feature Recognition in FeatureWorks!

Hillary, with featureworks, I've found the best way to work the part is in reverse machining order: slots and holes, rounds and chamfers, drafts,ribs, small cuts and bosses, large, cuts and bosses

This is especially important in your case because your fillets are breaking across a face at an odd angle.

If you can't get a face to recognize, then maybe try telling feature works to delete it and add it manually yourself after you've finished recognizing the part.

I've had pretty good luck with Featureworks, but there have been situations where it simply couldn't cope with the design intent that I was trying to establish.

You've got to think of featureworks as a bag of tricks instead of a deterministic path to a goal.

In these cases, where I can't get the whole model to recognize what I find helpful is to:

save a copy of the part,

use the delete faces function in featureworks to simplifiy the part,

recognize the simplified version.

insert the copy as a derived part,

create sketch based features that reproduce the ones I couldn't recognize (use convert entities to get exact measurements)

delete the external relationships

add dimensions to fully define the new sketches

then delete the derived part feature.

Hope that helps.

John

a shot in the dark here, but feature works will not recognize extrudes unless they are extruded perpendicular to the face of the part.

Hillary,

I have a suggestion.  Considering that feature works is sadly lacking when it comes

to parts that are more complicated then a standard machined part, why don't you just call up the

Pro-E part direectly into Solidworks and forget the IGES file?

I have worked with Pro-E before and when it came to parts like yours this was the way to go.

But, understand all of the feature come in unconstrained.  So you will have to go into each sketch

and constrain them.  Of course if it is necessary.

This is the way I used to do it and it worked pretty nicely.

It is usually faster to recreate fillets raher than fight for FeatureWorks to recognize them.  If there are even slight errors in the import file's fillet tangency (IGES can be a problem child in this respect), there will be trouble.

Hilary - Don't forget that (since 2010) you can invoke Featureworks in a nice way by RMB on, for example, a fillet or selection of fillets (that you know/guess to be the same).  You then click on 'Edit Feature' (see attached) and the feature is recognised.  Worth playing around with this.

Hillary,

I have had to do these things since SW97 before featureworks was included as part of office, now pro.

ModelMaker/Machinist and get imports, what i do is make an assembly, drop the part you need featureworked, then I start a new part and just use the import as a tempate and remake a whole new one, what is nice in the assembly is that if you use convert entities you can click the no extrenal references icon next to edit componant and the add your own references later.

featureworks is really only for rectalinear parts, not lofts, sweeps, or weird made parts...sometimes you'll get 100% some times you'll get 10%..depends on the shape of the part.

buy the time you monkey fart around trying you could have made a new on my template way.......