My Profiles in the Parts Library
Add your own profiles to the Parts Library, beside the shapes that come with it: a rectangular tube with your wall and corner radius, an angle, a channel, a round tube, or any closed outline you type as corner points or take from a sketch. Each one is a tile under My profiles in the Library drawer, and you drop it into the part the same way as the shipped shapes. Only the length is asked when you place it.
When to Use It
- You use the same odd size of tube, angle or channel again and again, and want it one drag away.
- Your shop stocks a section the library does not have, such as a hat channel, a stair tread nosing or a special rail.
- You want a frame built from one named stock size, so every member is the same.
How to Start It
Open the Library drawer (the narrow Library strip on the left edge of the viewer, or Library on the Features tab). Under the shipped shapes is My profiles, with a New profile... button. Your profiles are saved with the part you have open, so open a part, or start one with File, New, Part, first. Like the rest of modeling, this needs a Pro plan.
Step by Step
- Click New profile.... The New profile window opens.
- Type a Name, up to 40 letters, like "2 x 3 x 3/16 tube" or "Stair rail".
- Pick the Shape: Rectangular tube, Angle, Channel, Round tube or Custom outline.
- Type the sizes. Any unit works ("2", "1 3/8", "50 mm", "0.125 in"), and a plain number is in the units you are showing. The small drawing under the boxes shows the section as you type.
- For a Custom outline, type one corner on each line, across then up, with a comma between, like 0, 0. Type the corners in order round the outline; it closes itself back to the first corner. Or draw the outline in a sketch first, keep that sketch open, and press Use the open sketch to fill the box from it.
- Press Add profile (or Enter). The new tile shows under My profiles, and the window closes.
- To use it, drag the tile onto the 3D view, or click it and then click in the view. A small window asks for the Length (it starts at 24 in) and the way it runs: X, Y, Z, or Edge... and a straight edge of the part. Tick Reverse direction to run the other way. Press Place.
This window is simpler than the one for a shipped shape. It has the Length, the X, Y, Z and Edge... buttons, Reverse direction, Cancel and Place, and nothing else: there is no see-through preview in the view, no anchor point to pick, no turn buttons and no handles to drag. The part goes where you dropped or clicked, as described under Where It Goes. To move or turn it after, use Move/Copy Bodies.
Options
- Rectangular tube: width, height, wall, and an outside corner radius. Leave the radius empty or type 0 for square corners. The inside corner radius is the outside one less the wall. A square tube is a rectangular tube with the width and height the same.
- Angle: leg A (up), leg B (across) and the thickness. Square corners.
- Channel: depth, flange width, web thickness and flange thickness. Square corners, flanges running the same way.
- Round tube: outside diameter and wall.
- Custom outline: 3 to 100 corners, each no more than 10 metres from the 0, 0 point. A minus sign is fine, and so are fractions. A curve in a sketch is split into short straight pieces when you press Use the open sketch (each arc into 8).
- Rename: the small button under a tile. Type the new name and press Rename.
- Delete: the small button under a tile. It is taken out of the list at once. Ctrl+Z brings it back.
Where It Goes
A profile is placed the same way as a shipped shape: on the face you drop it on, or on the ground plane through the origin, with its section centred on the line through that point and its length running along the direction you chose. A custom outline is centred on the box around its corners, with "across" running across the section and "up" pointing up.
Saved and Undo
- The list is saved with the part, whenever the part is saved (a part already saved to your account saves itself a moment later). When you open the part again, your profiles are back. A different part has its own list.
- Adding, renaming or deleting a profile is one step of Undo (Ctrl+Z) and Redo (Ctrl+Y). Undo takes back the newest change first, whether that is a profile change, a modeling step or a line in an open sketch, and Redo puts them back in the same order. A new change of any kind ends what Redo could bring back.
- A part you place from a profile is a new solid body and one step in History. The step keeps the sizes (or the corners) and the profile's name, so renaming or deleting the profile later never changes a part you already placed. Edit Feature on the step changes its sizes; for a custom outline it changes the length.
Limits
- 30 profiles in one part at most. Delete one you no longer use to add another.
- A name is 40 letters at most. It cannot be the name of a shipped shape, or of another of your profiles (capital letters do not count), and it cannot hold < or >, or hidden characters such as ones that take no space or turn the writing direction round.
- A custom outline is one closed outline with no hole inside it. For a hollow section use Rectangular tube or Round tube. Its sides cannot cross or touch each other, and no corner can come within 0.001 mm of a side it is not on. The corners are kept to a millionth of a millimetre.
- Profiles do not have hot rolled corner radii; for those use the shipped Angle and Channel tiles, which have radius boxes.
- The list belongs to the part, not to your account, so it does not show in other parts.
Tips and What to Expect
- Your profiles are in the Library drawer. The Structural Member tool lists them too, after its own stock, so a whole frame can be built from one of them: see Structural Member.
- Name a profile the way the shop says it, so the History row reads well, for example "Stair rail (custom outline, 6 corners, 24 in long)".
- To copy a section from a drawing you have, sketch it on any plane with lines and arcs, then use Use the open sketch.
- The window fills the outline box with an example: a 3 x 2 x 1/4 angle as six corners. Replace it with your own.
Problems
- "You have 30 profiles, which is the most": delete one you no longer use, then add the new one.
- "A profile name is 40 letters at most" or "You already have a profile called ...": choose a shorter or a different name.
- "A profile name cannot hold hidden characters": a name pasted from somewhere else brought characters you cannot see. Type the name again.
- "The outline crosses itself": the corners are out of order. Type them in order round the outline.
- "Corner 4 touches the side from corner 1 to corner 2, or comes within 0.001 mm of it": move that corner away from the side, or take it out.
- "Corners 3 and 4 are in the same place" or "The outline runs back over itself at corner 4": take that corner out.
- "The outline has almost no area" or "is thinner than 0.01 mm": the corners are nearly in a line. Spread them out.
- "A corner of the outline is more than 10 metres from the origin": type the corners near 0, 0.
- "Corner 2: type it as two sizes with a comma between": each line needs exactly two sizes, like 1 3/8, 2.
- "The open sketch has 2 closed outlines" or "has no closed outline": leave only the one outline in the open sketch, or type the corners.
- "Open a part, or start one with File, New, Part, first": the list is saved with a part, so a part must be open.
- "Your own profiles are part of modeling, which comes with Pro": the plan does not include modeling.