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Turn Assembly into Part

Turn Assembly into Part

Turn Assembly into Part

(OP)
I have a small assembly with a total of 8 parts or so which i need to apply a weight parameter to.  It would be more simple for me to add weight globally instead of assigning a weight to each little part.

Is it possible to turn my assembly into 1 part?

p.s. I considered assigning the weight to 1 component and making all the others 0 grams but this product will float so buoyancy is a factor and cannot have the weight biased towards one side and would like to have it spread evenly throughout the part.

thanks in advance for the help.

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

Yes, you could turn the assy into one part, but that would be considered very bad practice & you would probably be creating problems for yourself (or others) later on.

Take a look at Propa-Gator from http://www.customsolids.com/
It will update properties globally.

Rather than apply a "weight parameter" it would be better to assign the correct material to the individual parts. Then if they are used in other assys, the material properties will be retained with the parts.

cheers
Helpful SW websites  FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions  FAQ559-1091

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

If you use SW05 or later, you can "Save As" your assembly as a SLDPRT file.  There are options for the output, see SW Help.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."
Steven K. Roberts, Technomad
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

(OP)
CorBlimey:

Yes, i am aware that by making this a solid it could cause great strife and unrest to me and/or others but i am doing this conversion with the main purpose of obtaining an assembly's center of gravity nothing more.  I am doing all this on a duplicate assembly which is not related to my working assembly.

Additionally, there are many little wires and tin plate pieces which i have no reason to add properties to for now, and probably never will.  


MadMango:

I just tried this and upon getting the save as options i get:

Assembly geometry to save in part file:
-exterior faces
-exterior components
-all components

i am trying one by one to see which one gives me the best results. So far i tried all components but it makes all teh components into their own solid body which i would rather do away with and have 1 solid body.  will keep you all updated.

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

Are all the parts made of the same material?

You can easily obtain the CoG of an assy using the Mass Properties tool.

cheers
Helpful SW websites  FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions  FAQ559-1091

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

I agree with Cor.  However considering MadMango's suggestion and your followup question. Select the "All Components" option.  Then as you pointed out, you will have a multibody part.  Within that part, you can "combine bodies."  Just select all the bodies in the feature manager and right click.  Select "combine bodies".  This will work if the bodies are in contact with each other.

Back, to CBL's suggestion.  I still think this is best.  It doesn't take much effort to assign the correct material to each part... there are only 8 of them.

Also, look into Matt Lombard's site for a macro that creates a sketch point on the center of mass of a part/assy. http://mysite.verizon.net/mjlombard/

-Shaggy

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

Does Matts "CG" macro work on an assy? I thought it was only for a single part.

cheers
Helpful SW websites  FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions  FAQ559-1091

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

I always assign mtl props to every part. Mkaes things works out better in the long run.

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-05)

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

(OP)
Like i said before, i am using this for a one time use of determining the CoG of an assembly.  Besides, the assembly has batteries which contain lead and battery acid so i will probably end up using an assigned mass at the end hence why id rather have it as a part, that way the weight is distributed evenly. (buoyancy issue)

thanks for the help guys. i got it to work.

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

I don't want to sound critical ... Im pleased to see that you got what was needed, but it sounds like a lot of work to get a CoG which SW can provide from the assy anyway.

You could have set the material for each part and obtained the assy CoG faster than the time it took to create this thread and read & respond to the answers ... and have ended up with an accurate assy.

cheers
Helpful SW websites  FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions  FAQ559-1091

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

(OP)
I obtained it using the Mass Properties command.

Tell me where is the material properties for battery acid and then ill gladly go ahead and do it your way from now on.

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

battery acid has a specific gravity of around 1.25. Create it yourself.

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

(OP)
LOL. so basically i am assigning a mass manually.  Which brings us back to the reason why i would rather have a mass applied to the entire assembly globally because of the buoyancy issue.

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

Creating a custom material and assigning it to a part is what you want to do, whether it be 8 parts or 100. Taking all of the contextual relations away from your assembly by creating a part of dumb solids from your assembly is what everyone was trying to tell you not to do. In the assembly you could move your 8 parts around and get new reports from the changes. You can use the mass properties tool in an assembly, so it basically boils down to the fact that these guys were trying to convey good solidworks practices.

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

(OP)
okay guys thanks for the good solidworks practice advice.  I do what you guys were trying to tell me 99.99% of the time.  However, for this one instance, i needed to make it this way.  Every problem has many different ways to resolve it and given the situation i am in, this way was the way to go in my opinion.

Thanks again.

RE: Turn Assembly into Part

uGlay,

looks like everybody jumped on your back hammer.

I support you. Do what you need to do!!!

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