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Merge or External Merge?

tjallen29

New member
I'm just starting to fool around with welded assemblies in WF 2.0, and have found that there are two different ways to do the "merge" operations:


1. (In assembly mode) Edit -> Component Display -> Merge.
All merged parts exist in a single part with a "Merge id" listed in the model tree for each merged part.


2. (with an AAX license in part mode) Insert -> Shared Data -> Merge from other model.
All merged parts exist in one part as above, however the references are listed as "External Merge id" in the model tree.


What (if any) is the difference between the two methods of merging? Is one way more desirable than another?


 
There are a lot of companies that prefer External Merges (and Copy Geoms) to the "regular" ones for data management issues.


Here's the difference between the two: with a regular Merge (and Copy Geom) the part into which the feature is placed now has a parent-child relationship with the assembly that defines the location of the component from which geometry is referenced.


With the External Merge and Copy Geom, the placement is defined via a Coord System located in the target part. Therefore, the resulting feature in thetarget part has a parent-child relationship with the source component only, and not with the assembly in which both are located.


In order to update the target part with the external data sharing features, it is necessary to have only the source component in memory, and not the assembly. I assume that with data management systems like Intralink, when you retrieve a component with all its dependencies, an external data sharing feature will cause significantly fewer components to be retrieved as well.


Btw, in WF 3.0, the Merge functionality (both external and not) and the Inheritance functionality have been "merged" into a single tool / interface.
 

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