Mirroring a weldment gusset fails? "Geometry pattern results in disjoint bodies"

[guru_florida]

I am playing around with welments (structural member feature). I love this feature now. select an 8020 profile, create a 3d sketch of lines sketching the shape of the frame/weldment and bam...solidworks does all the heavy lifting - even making the corner features you want.

I then create a gusset feature on the bottom of the frame as seen in the pic. Then I want to mirror these 4 gusset features to the top of the frame. I create a Plane that at the frame's midpoint and mirror...The preview of the gussets do go in the right spot and fully touch the top 8020 extrudes...but it wont mirror, instead it says "Geometry pattern results in disjoint bodies". I know, it must mean that the gusset is trying to join to "air" but zooming right in it looks like it's joining in the right spot.

(btw: The middle members are not at the halfway point, they are at 9" high, the entire frame is 24" high.)

Any ideas why it's coming back disjoint?

Thanks,
C

[BurrMan]

DId you perhaps do some kind of "connection" of the gussets first to the frame??" so if they are 4 solid bodies seperate, you could mirror ok, but if they were somehow joined or booleaned to the frame, then selecting just the "faces" would result in the disjointed bodies mirror, that would need to be addressed.

Just a speculation, as it's hard to tell from a screengrab... Do you have a sldprt file you can post?

[guru_florida]

I didnt do any operations on the gussets after creating them. To create, I clicked on the gusset tool in the weldments toolbar. I then select the two corner faces on the 8020 extrustions. I then configure the size and offsets of the gussets and then accepted it. I did this 4 times for each corner on the bottom. Then I tried to mirror to the top. The gussets are this attached to the frame, but this is the normal way to create these gussets. I mirror using "bodies" not faces, I figure that is correct. I didnt try just mirroring faces but the option is there.

I included the part file. I included the "WeldmentProfiles" dir which I had to add to Tools | Options | FileLocations --- Select Weldments from drop down.

I couldnt attach the zip file here for some reason, so I put it on my hotfile account:
http://hotfile.com/dl/79152204/f29a276/Frame.zip.html

I have the file enabled so you can download it without delay.

Thanks,
Colin

[BurrMan]

Hey C... SOrry, I've got nothing... Maybe someone else can jump in on this with help...

[fatal-exception]

Why not just make 4 additional gussets on the top of the frame, or make all 8 gussets using the same feature?

I don't really see any problem, other than solidworks doesn't like that you want to mirror the gussets. Many ways around that little problem...

[guru_florida]

Why not just make 4 additional gussets on the top of the frame, or make all 8 gussets using the same feature?

I don't really see any problem, other than solidworks doesn't like that you want to mirror the gussets. Many ways around that little problem...

Yep. your right. I have no real problem doing that other than I try to stay as parametric as possible. So if I modify one gusset then the others would update. I could still add relations after the fact i suppose but it's not that important.

This was more a curiosity as to why then a roadblock. I've used mirroring a lot with a lot of success, I was curious why it didnt work.

In any case, thanks for taking a look, I really appreciate it!

Colin

[FranH]

I'm ProE and we may be bit different.

First I need a plane for the lower set, second we have a 2 step method to assure the gusset is 'attached' else it could be in midair and be extruded as such.

I would check the tubing sketch to GUARANTEE all intersections are 90 deg/parallel/constrained and tangent to each other. Any slight mismatch will put the mirrored gussets where you don't want them.

Glad to see I'm not the only one 'a click away' from success.

[GRC Fab]

Make sure you click on the "Bodies to Mirror" pull down before you select the gussets. If you use the "Features to Mirror" pull down then you'll get an error. You probably already figure it out but the same thing drove me crazy awhile back.

[guru_florida]

GRC Fab: That did it! Thanks!

I gave up on finding a solution for that and just created the gussets one by one. I can't beleive it was so simple. I didnt think to try the "Bodies to Mirror" since the gusset is really a feature.