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Reference parts in Assembly

tham

New member
I have one method in place but am looking for suggestions.



How are you showing reference parts in assembly? Let me give you an example: I have a tower mounted to a truck. My drawing is of the tower but I want the truck in the picture for reference. model tree would look something like this:



top-down-main

|-TruckAssembly

|-TowerAssembly



Thanks for your input
 
I would create a simplified rep called Tower_Only, then exclude the truck.

In drawing mode, I would make the truck geometry all phantom lines.
 
Typically what I have done in the past is create a view in the drawing of the Reference part/assembly. Create a snapshot of the part/assembly (views>modify view>snapshot) and then group the snapshot entities together (Tools>Group). This allows the part/assembly to be in the drawing, show it as a reference, and not take up a lot of file space. The only thing is that if the reference part is ever changed, the drawing won't update, but you can always delete the snapshot group and create the snapshot again. I hope this is what you are looking for, if not emal me by clicking on the eserv link to the left of this message.
 
Thanks DenE, the only problem with that is (If I understood correctly) I would then have the TopDown driving my drawing and filling the Title block. This isn't good.



Right now we are using a couple different methods:

1. Creating the drawing using the assembly we want. Add the Top-Down Assembly with a predeteremined Simp Rep using the ADD MODEL menu pick. The problem with this is the time it takes to pull up the massive top-down and create all the reps.



2. Some have created drawing assemblies These are assemblies outside the top down (using coordinate systems). The assemblies contain the assemblies we want and the reference assemblies. The problem here is the extra data to keep up with and it's just squirrely.



I'm looking for a cleaner more robust method.
 
eServ method does not take much more HD space, only con is that you need to update the drawing, manually, if the Top-down-main changes.



I presume that your title block uses drawing labels, something like: &model_name. If such label is part of a format table, it will be evaluated (replaced by text) according to the model that was active when the format is inserted into the drawing.



Good practice: Add as much models as you want, set active model to one yoy want to see in the Title block, Insert format, Save.
 
In the truck assembly create a new component part and assemble it to the default csys. Use modify> mod part and pick the new part. Do a feature>create>data sharing>shrinkwrap. Set the quality to 3 and ok.

when its done you will a simple, small , and fast part you can now add to your tower asm and show as ref. The tower asm will drive the bom and you can filter the truck part out.

-- OR --

in your tower asm use feature>create>data sharing. ExtShrinkwrap and then browse to the truck asm and it will get a shrinkwrap feature in your asm so no dependencies. Make sure you use an appropriate csys to reference the shrinkwrap feature.
 

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