Ask a hundred engineers wow they would go about the process of generating a hole pattern with lots and lots of holes, and you will get a hundred answers. So this is just my two cents, but a penny saved is a penny earned.
The technique that I am going to show you describes using the all powerful “Fill Pattern”. The Fill Pattern feature lets you select an area defined by co-planar faces or a sketch that lies on co-planar faces. The command fills the defined region with a pattern of features or a predefined cut shape. The typical uses for this are for ventilation, filters, grips or to reduce the weight of your parts.
The best way to set these up is to create to sketches to capture the region that you want to work in and to create a sketch to orient the pattern of holes. In the YouTube video below, you will notice that I offset the boundary of the cylindrical disk for one sketch, then in another sketch I create a single line for a direction vector for the pattern to line up on. Now, here is the coolest part: I get to make the pattern, even without creating the hole ahead of time as a feature. The “Fill Pattern” tool, which is found under Insert… Pattern/Mirror… Fill Pattern or in the Pattern Drop down toolbar button, can create a hole for you, without a sketch. The video below describes some of the features and menu picks to set this up.
After quickly creating the pattern, I send the file out to the laser drilling machine by saving a DXF file directly from the part file by selecting the pace with all the hole, choosing File.. Save As… and choosing DXF as the file type. SolidWorks nicely presents a preview of the DXF file to ensure that it will be good for the Laser machine.
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