Mirroring a can of worms! 1

[krywarick6]

Well, actually opening a can of worms.

I'm working on a fact finding mission. We are struggling with a best practice in our company as it relates to mirroring parts.

Some will mirror a body in a part and some will mirror the part in an assembly. Some say, "What does it matter?" That's well and good until it has to be made. To me, there's a whole realm of control issues that occur here.

Let's consider a sheet metal part.
1. In a part, some may mirror the body for rh/lh parts. All well and good until one part has round holes and another has square holes. I know, same but different. To me that is a totally different part. Also, now you have to wrestle with configurations and flat patterns, blah, blah....
2. Some will mirror the part in assembly. "It's too many files to keep track of..." others argue. Is it? Compared to wrestling with configurations? What about when it's the round hole, square hole argument? Then what?

How about rebuild time, references, mates, configuration calling and any other thing that can be quirky in SolidWorks?

Everyone uses SolidWorks differently. How does your company approach things? Do you have general rules? Is it case by case? Or do things just run amuck?



Christopher Zona - Product Designer
Loretto, Ontario

 

[ctopher]

If I mirror a part in an assy, it's a new part number because it's now a different part. There have been cases where I will mirror features within a part, but they become new configurations and the part numbers are the same with dash numbers...tooling is an example.
The complaint about having too many part to keep track of is laziness IMO.

Chris
SolidWorks 10 SP4.0
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[Updraft]

I'm with Chris on the laziness issue regarding parts. If it is not the same part then it is a different part, DUH!, and therefore warrants a different part number.

Our practice is to mirror a part at the point of greatest commonality. The base part will have a configuration that says "Base Config" and then the config for the finished part is named "Left-hand" or whatever is appropriate. The mirrored part, for consistency, will have its default configuration renamed "Right-hand" (or whatever is appropriate). These Left and Right configs then get their unique features. Both part files are saved to their separate part numbers.

- - -Updraft.

 

[gwubs]

We make mirrored parts new parts, not configurations. We also have a strictly enforced rule - mirrored part ONLY differs in the aspect of being the opposite hand. The parts are perfect reflections of each other in ALL respects. We do not refer to "left" or "Right" because these are often not possible to define - we simply call the mirrored part "myfilenameM". This may be a bit more work, but it is very effective. Make rules and enforce them would be my advice. Good luck.

 

[SteveMartin]

I have seen RH/LH parts as mirrored configurations within the part file, but I don't prefer it. I am in the separate part numbers (and part files) camp. We don't have a written best practice for this, but my personal practice is to create one hand, import that into a second part file and mirror it there. If there are any variations between the hands such that I would have to add features after the mirror I build both parts from the ground up. For simple parts (with the definition of simple changing depending on how busy I am) I will do this even if the are true mirrors - just because I've had enough parts change from true mirrors to close but not exact mirrors.

Mirroring in an assembly? MAYBE for quick concept work, never for production parts.

I also agree with not referring to 'left', 'right' or any other direction in part descriptions - for our work at least what is right in one installation may be left (or even up, etc) in another.

 

[drawoh]

krywarick6,

If you use mirroring to generate new parts, you must tabulate your drawing so that you have unique part numbers.

The real discussion here is tabulation of drawings. Where I work, our PDM administrators discussed tabulation. Since they could not come up with a simple rule for it, they banned the practise. I am frequently frustrated by this.

You tabulate either to save drafting time, or to communicate explicitly that a bunch of parts are mostly identical.

For example, if sheet metal parts are left hand/right hand, the fabricator should be able to punch two identical flat layouts. I have generated a drawing for a set of steel angles each of which had the same hole pattern at the ends. A couple of them had a couple of holes in the middle. Otherwise, only the lengths varied.

If you are saving drafting time, you have to balance the time saved in drafting, to the time wasted by production trying to figure your drawing out.

JHG

 

[HercalloY]

Just a quick one... for those that have issues with specifying left or right hand. You can use the terms "As Drawn" and "Opposite Hand" to get around having specific hands defined.

Because lets not forget showing opposite hands to as-drawn parts saves fabrication/manufacturing time just as using mirroring electronically.