Over my years of using Inventor, I have found times and
scenarios where I need a dimension to be 0 or almost nothing. For those times, I have begun using 0.001 as
my personal approximate 0 value. It
works for both inches and millimeters.
Recently, I even found it useful on an angular dimension.
The beauty of this value is that it relatively unnoticeable on
drawings and models. If the geometry
gets dimensioned on a drawing, the precision of the dimension should round down
to a 0.
So where can the Power of Almost Zero be leveraged?
My original discovery of the Power of Almost Zero was when I
began using iLogic. The specific design
had configurations where a particular value or parameter would be 0 and other
positive values. I created a sketch
driving the dimension with a parameter.
I found that if I set the parameter to 0 then changed to a positive value;
the dimension would randomly push the geometry the wrong way. I knew then that I had to find a way to get
the geometry to stay in the same relative direction of the geometry that I was
dimensioning from. That is when I
figured if I used a value such as 0.001 instead of 0, my geometry would stay on
the same side of the geometry I was measuring from.
I have had scenarios is sheet metal models where I need flanges
to touch. If they touch, Inventor will
“weld” the material in those spots and not flatten the part. However, if there is a 0.001 gap, the part
will be able to flatten. I would have to
say that my most common use of 0.001 in sheet metal models is as the Gap value
for the Rip command.
My previous post referenced a way to use 0.001 as an angular limit
to a Cylindrical Joint.
I truly believe that the Power of Almost Zero can be used in
all kinds of ways. I would love to hear
ways other people have leveraged this power.
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