An accelerating quality of MachineBuilder stems from its concrete library of parts: discrete entities that have a physical twin ready to be used in the real world. The flip-side is that it’s harder to approach design in a top-down, parametric manner. We’re considering several future improvements, but in the meantime, there are a few good tricks to be aware of.
1. Fully automatic resize (applicable to simple patterns of parallel extrusions)
The examples below illustrate cases where resizing the design is extremely simple. The tool takes care of carrying automatically all connections with other parts.
| method 1 | method 2 |
|---|---|
| No need to select anything, just right-click on an extrusion and the option will be available if it is supported for your configuration. | Here you select the parallel extrusions of equal length that will drive the resize; connected parts follow. In this example, we heal the remaining extrusions manually. |
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2. Manual resize with island manipulations
When option 1 isn’t available, it’s often quite easy to detach an island of parts, resize or reorganise the entities, and then reattach the island.
