Assembly

[2SRPE]

I have an odd shaped component that I want to add to an assembly and locate it in a specific spot within the assembly. The easiest way I can think of doing this is to mate the component planes within the part itself as needed with the datums of the assembly. However, the datums of the assembly are visible but I can't figure out how to show the datums of the part that I want to mate with, all that is shown is the part and no planes to use for mating. Any suggestions?

 

[JohnRBaker]

Change the Reference Set of the Component to 'Entire Part'. Then after the part has been property positioned and constrained, set the Reference Set back to 'Model'. Even thought the Datums are no longer visible, they will still be used to control the relationship of the Component with the rest of the parts which makes up the Assembly.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[hudson888]

John is right but I can elaborate on what we would usually do in such cases is to make a MATE reference set with just the elements of the component that we need to align it with the top assembly.

For components that just live in space and don't require and motion or travel articulation that would really require the mating conditions be kept it is often our contetntion that once it is positioned the mating conditions need not be kept and may even be deleted. In the same way if you need to create a non standard reference set just to help you position a component you might choose to get rid of it after it serves its very short lived purpose. My thoughts are that we don't try to maintain anything in the data that outlives its purpose that way our files are smaller and cleaner.

Others work differently but I offer the insight that not everyone thinks the same way and you're welcome to keep it as simple as possible when you can.


Cheers

Hudson