Looking for some basic CAD guidance in the realm of plate design.

[MrRooks]

So I'm pretty new to CAD. I also own a 3D printer and have been printing out tiny test plates I drew up from measurements I took from an existing plate and made my own tweaks. I wan't to design a custom plate that is VERY similar to an Ergodox but will have the pinkie finger column brought down as I have slightly shorter pinkies than usual so those columns are a little awkward. I also want to tweak the thumb cluster a tiny bit, mainly making it smaller. I kinda want a dox atreus hybrid(must have num row).

That said I'm looking for useful information on how to efficiently draw up plates. Thanks to my employer I have access to SolidWorks. My current plate pictured below was drawn up relatively crudely, at least I think so anyway. the 2x2 cluster was done by doing a feature pattern and the lower 2u button was drawn in separately. What's the best way to add lots of switches to a design? The feature pattern tool seems like it's almost what would work but only for perfectly linear rows and columns. What's the best way to draw the staggered columns and thumb cluster sections. I know I can use some construction geometry to move some things around but would I have to make a button sketch for each column and then make it a vertical pattern? I also couldn't figure out how to get the fillets into the pattern, I had to go through and manually fillet every corner that I wanted a fillet on.


http://i.imgur.com/h1tsml0.png
http://i.imgur.com/E9m5XO0.jpg

Still have some decisions to make but this is the progress toying with the layout. http://i.imgur.com/N9Qtg9k.jpg

[CPTBadAss]

You're not going to be able to get around that fillet thing unless you build it into the sketch. You'll have to manually click on every corner. There's not a universal fillet all corners AFAIK.

I believe you can get the pattern tool to follow a series of points. Try laying out each row with a point indicating a corner or center of the hole sketch. Then use the pattern tool to pattern it along those points.

If I were to sketch the columns and rows, I'd figure out the center points and draw points and construction lines.

But you can also ask jdcarpe and swill how they got their setups to work out. That's just how I would do it.

[possumgumbo]

UseCreate a layout at:
http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/
to edit your layout, paste the RAW data into
http://builder.swillkb.com/
to create a CAD file of said layout.

I used this, and am almost finished with my keyboard now. My wiring is about 25% done.
Everything worked pretty much flawlessly, and when I had a problem, Swill fixed it in about ten minutes. That guy's a champ.

[MrRooks]

UseCreate a layout at:
http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/
to edit your layout, paste the RAW data into
http://builder.swillkb.com/
to create a CAD file of said layout.

I used this, and am almost finished with my keyboard now. My wiring is about 25% done.
Everything worked pretty much flawlessly, and when I had a problem, Swill fixed it in about ten minutes. That guy's a champ.

Yeah but that doesn't help me learn CAD unfortunately. I'm not looking for the quickest way to make a plate, I'm looking for the best practices when drawing my own plate. Thanks though.

[jdcarpe]

Sorry, I can't help you with SolidWorks. I only use 2D CAD software, and know nothing of 3D CAD.

[MrRooks]

You're not going to be able to get around that fillet thing unless you build it into the sketch. You'll have to manually click on every corner. There's not a universal fillet all corners AFAIK.

I believe you can get the pattern tool to follow a series of points. Try laying out each row with a point indicating a corner or center of the hole sketch. Then use the pattern tool to pattern it along those points.

If I were to sketch the columns and rows, I'd figure out the center points and draw points and construction lines.

But you can also ask jdcarpe and swill how they got their setups to work out. That's just how I would do it.

So I did some digging and you are correct. I can create one cutout, then make a "sketch driven pattern" using dots on a fresh sketch. After I get the rows using that I then use linear pattern to make the columns based on the row. Time to get cracking on my custom layout

[CPTBadAss]

Glad I could help out. Hope you post pictures of your progress

[MrRooks]

Glad I could help out. Hope you post pictures of your progress

Will do. I'll start a build log when I make enough progress to warrant a thread. I'm interested in doing some home PCB work too so that should be fun.

[MrRooks]

So just in case anyone else stumbles onto this thread looking for the same thing I was... I finally found the answer and it wasn't doing a curve driven pattern. Curve driven pattern wouldn't give what I was looking for but 'blocks' do. I sketched one cutout then selected all of the lines in the sketch and made it into a block. Now I can drop a block in a sketch, tie it to some construction geometry to play with my angles and I can then do a sketch based pattern from that to make other holes at that same angle. If I then go back to the seed block and make changes it goes to all blocks I dropped elsewhere and patterns associated with them.