Managing CAD files for deformable parts in assemblies? 1

[McLeod]

For those readers who use associative part, assembly, draft, etc. CAD files which include deformable parts (i.e. parts which have a free state geometry, and a different assembled geometry): how do you manage those parts with respect to their two states?

We use Solid Edge, which is easy for assemblies of rigid elements. However, for deformable parts, we have to create one free state part file to generate the detail drawing of the part, and a separate deformed part file to create the assembly model and its associated drawing. This causes a loss of associativity within the model system, since a change to the free state part is not automatically reflected in the assembly model or drawing.

The situation becomes even more complicated for assemblies which have separate views for different deformed states of a part. Each additional deformed state means a new part file which has to be manually updated without introducing any discrepancies between the files.

Is there a better way?

 

[ProEpro]

This a very common situation that is allways hard to handle.

In Pro/Engineer we have two things that make it more bearable. This first is a family table which lets you create a table that controls certain features on the part. The table could have a deformed and undeformed part. Changes made to one part can affecet both.

The second is a thing called simplified reps which are like layers only the itmes that are blanked are not loaded into memory. With these you can have one assembly that has all the states of the part. Ussing the simplied reps to turn off the unwanted states lets the drawing show the state that you need.

I know this is very software specific advice but you could get the same results using layers in allmost any cad package.

 

[GregLocock]

In a similar vein , the marketing spiel for IDEAS claims that even your FE models are associatively linked back to your parametric solid model, so when you update the part dimensions in theory your FE analysis gets re-run.

Ha!

Not in the real world.

Cheers

Greg Locock