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Replacing parts with external references

mdemers

Member
Hi y'all,


I have an assembly containing a part that has features referenced to the assembly's skeleton model. I foud out that I had made a mistakeinserting the part directly in the assembly. I need to insert the part in a sub-assembly that will be inserted in my top-level assembly.


The way I would normally proceed is to create my sub-assembly, insert the part in it and replace the part in my top-level assembly by the sub-assembly. But if I do that, the part will lose all the references that its features have with the top-level assembly's skeleton.


Does anyone know how to replace my part without suspending its references?


Thanks,


Mat
 
I'm not real sure about this but think that using Restructure will be less destructive. You might not lose any of the parts references at all.
 
A potential problem with moving a part DOWN to a sub-assembly with restructure is that you MAY have to have the upper level assembly in memory to open the sub-assembly. I say may because I don't know how references to skeletons behave in this instance. Certainly, if you have other types of references (such as placement datums) to the upper level assembly, you will not be able to open the sub-assembly by itself. Moving parts UP to a higher level assembly never causes a problem.
 
Dr Gallup,


I can now validate what you said about moving a part down to a sub-assembly. After reading your post I tested it and couldn't open the sub-assmebly by itself.


Another unfortunate thing that I found out is that if you move a component from a top-level assembly to a sub-assembly, move it back to the top-level assembly and then delete the sub-assembly, your external references to the skeleton will be lost. You won't see it with the model check though, nor with info, parent/child. But when you'll want to redefine the feature, you'll have to redefine it for good.


That said, restructure will probably be helpful forme, despite its limitations.


Thanks to both of you,


Mat
 
Thanks for the feedback, guys. I'm wondering; will setting freeze_failed_assy_comp fix the can't open problem? I don't think I have that problem, but could be some other factor(s) involved.
 

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