CAD Forum

I remember seeing a knurl macro on the old Solidworks forum.
I've never really needed it until now, but damned if i can find it on their new shitty forum.
Any chance someone has one that you can share please?

Thanks
Mark

Hi mark,
What does it do exactly? I suppose it is not named knurl because you would already have found it i guess.

Hi Eddy,

I still haven't found it.

The way it worked ... you select the circle at both end of a cylinder along with the cylinder face, and the macro would add the knurl between the 2 circles on the face. it was very handy and looked way better than adding textures.

Hi Mark,

can you show an image of a part that had this knurl on it?
Might be interesting which features were used to google.

Eddy

I am currently creating a library feature for a client of mine to create a knurled interface. He needs the function because he wants to produce the parts in 3D printing.
But I'm not sure what will take more time. Adding the knurl in CAD, or printing the complete part :-(

This is how the macro ran. Worked great. I should have made a backup and didnt.
forgot to get that one before the forum changed over.

I only post this because someone mentioned that it might take longer to A than B. That was my dilemma with this part: In the end, because it's not a flat, round or conical surface, I just had to bite the bullet and do it. Here's generally what I did to make the knurl.

1 - offset the surface and copy the original surface.
2 - make a pattern of a sketch for the knurl - basically a bunch of parallelograms
3 - make an offset of the parallelogram and pattern that
4 - trim the offset surface to leave a lot of little parallelogram holes
5 - trim the original copy to leave a lot of little floating parallelograms
6 - loft each little floating parallelogram to each little parallelogram hole

The first 5 steps took about 10 minutes. The last step took 2 hours (478 loft features - I wish I were kidding).

I spent 2-3 days on it and tried a bunch of different methods, including using draft, swept cuts, and others, and it just didn't look neat and tidy. This is the only method for an irregular knurl that created something really exact.

All of that just to say this: Sometimes just doing the work takes less time than figuring out an "easy" method.

I made a set of checkered handgun grips in NX. I'm not a surfacing guy, so I did it all with swept cuts. It took hours to rebuild as well. When it came time to manufacture them, I made it smooth and applied grip tape.

matt wrote: ↑Wed Sep 08, 2021 6:46 pm All of that just to say this: Sometimes just doing the work takes less time than figuring out an "easy" method.

LOL .. I dont know about that one. for example .. typing in this forum seems like an easy method over trying to arrange a time and place for all to meet to ask if anyone happened to make a copy of a knurl macro.