×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

New sub-Assembly references question

New sub-Assembly references question

New sub-Assembly references question

(OP)
I looked in the archives for an answer to my question but I didnt find what I was looking for.

(SW 2012)
While in an assembly, I would like to take a few parts and create a sub-assembly. These parts have external references (screw holes) defined in the top level. When I create the sub-assembly, I loose the references.

I can do a pack and go, change the file name, delete what I don't want in the new sub-assembly and insert this new sub back into the top level. This way I don't loose any references.

I can also create a new sub-assembly from selected components (loose my references), save, close. Then select the parts one by one and update thier refs to the new sub assembly.

Clearly I am missing something.

RE: New sub-Assembly references question

(OP)
Nobody has a better way to move part files and preserve references than the ways I listed above? I feel like there has to be a better way.

RE: New sub-Assembly references question

I wish I could help but I abhor external references and will remove them ASAP so I've never encountered your particular issue.
I thought, though, that there was an option to keep references but I may be thinking of a different feature.

Jeff Mirisola
My Blog

RE: New sub-Assembly references question

sirbartoo,

I am with Jeff on breaking external references as soon as possible. There is just too much opportunity for problems by leaving in any longer than necessary. It is typically easy, too, to do this in the assembly by propagating the holes/cuts to the parts, then going to the parts and breaking the references and fixing the sketch planes and any dimensions that were dangling.

- - -Updraft

RE: New sub-Assembly references question

One thing, I don't break external references I delete them as I hate seeing ->x in my feature manager. That's more annoying than ->?.

Jeff Mirisola
My Blog

RE: New sub-Assembly references question

I don't understand the hatred for external references. They can be a pain in the ass when you're working with someone else's model and you don't know how things will update, but when modeled well, they're very handy. I'll make an assembly with anywhere from 4 to 40 components, run it by the customer, and they may want this part taller, that part wider, whatever. I just have to change those few things and not worry about if all of my other holes/features are in the right place, because the external references move them to the right places.

OP, one thing I've done in the past is to create a new assembly with the components you want in the sub-assembly, then go back to your original, main assembly, edit the properties of all of the components that went into the sub assembly to make them not show up in the BOM, hide them, then insert the sub-assembly you created. This way you don't see the components in the top level assembly, they don't show up in the BOM, but they do still update with their external references and you have the sub-assembly you wanted. This is one workaround, I'm sure there are others.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources