Merge best approach?

[JimiH]

hello


I have a part299789.prt & drawing 299789.drwthe drawing isfully detailed (A lot of dimensions)and finished, now I've had a request to assemble another part to 299789.prt merge the twoand detail the subsequent part.


Now I would like to do this without having to detail the whole drawing again.


I've thought of creating an assembly test.asm with the two parts then activating 299789.prt and insert>shared data>Merge then pick the second part.


What would be the best plan of action for this?


Thanks


Geoff

 

[michaelpaul]

the caveat to what you want to do means that you will now have a new part consisting of the merge between two other parts. if the parts really are identical then when you make an engineering change to one, you must also make a change to the other to keep documentation and CAD in sync. an assembly would probably be the cleanest way to do this but you'd have to create a new drawing. it's up to you though.

I would take the first part that is fully detailed and make copies of the drawing and model so they have new names (if you need to create a new, unique part number for this new merged part.)

open the renamed part.
<insert>, <shared data> <merge inheritance> now open the second part you want to add to this original part. assemble it using references just like you would in an assembly part. click ok and your new part now contains an inheritance feature with the new geometry.

you can make this inheritance feature dependent or independent if you want to. if you go into the feature options. dependent means that a change to the original will update in this new part. independent will break the link so you can actually edit features directly in your new merged model. interestingly enough, you can flip flop back and forth between dependent and independent so be careful.

now when you open your drawing, it should reflect the new merged geometry.

good luck.

 

[JimiH]

Thanks, This is what I did


1 - Used Save as in PDM and created new numbers for the prt & drw


2 - Created an assembly and assembled the new prt and the other part


3- Merged the other part with the new part.


Now I have a fully detailed drawing and only have to add a couple of dims due to the other part now being merged with the new.


Only problem is now the newpart has theassembly I createdas a dependent , how can I perminately break the link between the assembly and the new part?


I have toggled the Independant/Depentdant switch in the merge feature with no obvious difference?


You can see below that 426144_MERGE.asm is a parent of 426144.prt


View attachment 4542


Geoff
Edited by: JimiH