Removing Holes

It often happens that it is necessary to redo the model of the finished structure, in which all the fastening holes have already been made. For example, change the type of fasteners, change the hinges on the doors. But removing the holes from each solid separately is a long time. It is especially difficult to do this when parts are combined into many blocks-assemblies. The RemHoles command will come to your aid. The program will find and remove all round holes by itself, even inside blocks. The command knows how to deal with AutoCAD glitches, in many cases saving solids from irreparable damage.

Features of the program:

- Search for closed cylindrical surfaces in 3d-solids.

- Search for solid parts inside blocks and nested blocks (can be disabled)

- Filtering (that is, excluding from processing) parts by layers.

- Removing holes smaller than the specified diameter.

- Delete only drills (according to the settings of the current NC preparation style)

- Removal of all solid holes at once (fast), or removal of holes one by one (slow). The latter allows in many cases to save the solid from destruction due to glitches in AutoCAD.

- In AutoCAD, the program will try to remove the circle on the surface, which AutoCAD often leaves after removing the holes.

- You can customize the program through the AVC Options Palette or from the command line.

- The program outputs statistics to the command line - how many holes were removed and how many solids could not be processed.

The program is not compatible with older versions of AutoCAD. Use only in 2018 and older. Otherwise, you face fatal failures.

Read about downloading and installing the program here.

To run the plugin, you will have to register account and top up your account balance by making a donation or receiving bonuses.

Then you can activate one of the licenses:

• Annual license - 10 EUR.

• Unlimited license - 50 EUR. Free updates for 1 year.

• The trial period is 20 days.

Screencast

You can select parts and assembly blocks in advance, before calling the command. If nothing is selected when calling the RemHoles command, the command will ask you to select the parts from which you want to remove holes. At this point, you will see the command setup options on the command line. All unsuitable objects in the selection will be simply discarded.

Immediately after choosing the parts, the command will start working. The command only works with 3d solids. Depending on the settings, the command can also search for parts in blocks.

The command works quite slowly, especially in AutoCAD, where program have to bypass and fix its glitches. In the course of work, a progress bar is shown. And you can interrupt work by pressing ESC.

After work, the command will print to the command line the number of holes removed and the number of solids that could not be processed.

Settings

The settings dialog can be invoked from the command line using the TUNE option. Or you can use the AVC Options Palette. Most of the command settings can be made directly on the command line during part selection.

Object selection filter

Inside Assemblies - the command will treat the blocks you have selected as assemblies and will look for solids in them to remove holes. The program will also check nested blocks. Arrays will be processed too. The command does not work with dynamic blocks or BricsCAD Mechanical components. Also, the command will ignore all blocks not marked as Allow Exploding.

Unlocked only - objects on locked layers will not be processed.

Ignored layers - a list of layers, parts and blocks from which the program will not process. Typically there are annotation layers, the Fixture layer, and the Holes layer.

Hole selection options

All - Any full cylindrical holes will be removed, regardless of their diameter.

Less than - only small holes less than or equal to the specified diameter will be removed.

Drills - Only remove holes that are suitable for the drilling technology. Adjust the diameters of the existing drills in the current CNC style.

1 by 1

While debugging the program, it was discovered that AutoCAD has a serious glitch. When removing multiple holes at the same time, it can severely distort the solid. Suddenly, new faces, ledges and so on appear. This glitch was avoided by successively subtracting the holes one by one. This makes the program much slower, but the risk of damage to parts is reduced. BricsCAD does not have such problems and there is no point in enabling this option.

Known Issues

The program uses the heaviest and most buggy AutoCAD APIs - working with solids. I highly recommend saving the drawing before calling this command. Especially if she has a lot of work to do.

Checked that the commnd cannot process many solids at once in older versions of AutoCAD. In particular, in AutoCAD 2013 and 2014, the solid-state engine is so buggy that it consistently leads to a fatal crash already on the second, maximum third solid. If you still decide to use this command with older versions of AutoCAD, then call it for each solid separately.

All versions of AutoCAD have a glitch: When you delete a cylindrical surface of a blind hole, AutoCAD leaves a trace on the solid surface in the form of a circle. This garbage is not so easy to remove later. And it remains on flat casts, interferes with drilling the details. I have developed a complex algorithm that glues an additional cylinder to the solid at this point, and then subtracts the same cylinder. Thus, the excess mugs are erased. But this only works on flat solid surfaces and not in all 100% of cases.

Be attentive, follow the results of the command's work. And undo the changes if you run into problems.