Translate base reference planes in part

[NZMark]

Dear All,

Often I have imported parts where the origin of the base reference planes is significantly/arbitrarily shifted from the part body.

I am looking for a way to translate the base reference planes to ("smartly") coincide with body feature points, but have had no success.

Can anyone instruct me how to achieve this?

(Up to now, I create a set of parallel planes, but this has some handling drawbacks later).

Many thanks, MT

 

[donyoung]

Hi

you can use 'Modify' --> MoveFaces. In that menue
choose 'Body' from the PullDown. Select the part
choose 'Along edge', select an edge, specify a
point on this edge and move it to the desired location

Or put it in an Assembly, constrain it so that is located
where you would like to have it. Save the assembly and
then use 'edit it in place'

dy

 

[beachcomber]

No, there is no way to move the base reference planes - they are fixed at the 0,0,0 origin of the file.
Use Dons method to move the body to the origin or create a co-ordinate system at the point where you want the origin to be.
Co-ordinate systems have implied planes that can be used for positioning in an assembly. If you use the match co-ordinate systems constraint in an assembly you will see that it creates 3 planar alignments.

bc.
2.4GHz Core2 Quad, 4GB RAM,
Quadro FX4600.

 

[NZMark]

Dear DY, BC,

Many thanks for the responses. Always good to know what's possible vs impossible!

I had tried some things with "Move Faces", but in some common cases I didn't have a very elegant method.

e.g. For a *cylindrical* body, offset in all three directions from the origin, the edges to move along (e.g. tangents) do not always exist (so I have to try and set up 2-point lines between 2 vertices of circular faces)...
but more importantly, the destination key-points are located on the base reference planes themselves, and I can't seem to select these.

My workaround at present is to get the xyz-offsets with "Inspect Element", write them down, and type them in for the Move. Not so super, plus I end up doing three lengthy Moves...

What would be nice is to select a point on the object, and have a direct Move function to bring this point to (0,0,0) via xyz translations.

I did just try out adding a new "Coordinate System". This definitely gets the job done more elegantly. Then I use just the CS when placing the part in a subsequent assembly (with the useless, distractingly distant, ref. planes turned off).

Any further comments would be greatly appreciated...

Cheers, MT