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I just don't really understand what the practical difference is. Inheritance lets you see the model tree of the part you've brought in, but it doesn't let you redifine the features or anything like that. The only thing I've seen it be able to do related to the bringing in model tree is that you can right-click Edit and change some major external dimensions. But that seems to be about the extent to which it provides access to the features individually. Am I correct? At the moment merge is seeming more attractive than inherit because it lets me right click and hide, which leaves the part displayed but hides all the little things like sketches etc that are otherwise made visible when you merge/inherit. With inherit I'[ve found no way of doing this.
Basically, I'm just wondering when you merge and when you inherit. I'm concerned I'm going to go too far in what I'm working on and then discover that I should have chosenmerge instead of inherit. It seems that you canredefine a merge to be inherit (by selecting the inherit button in the definition toolbar), but once you've done that you can't go back to it just being merged.
Inheritance will allow you to vary the dimensions of the geometry. For an example of when this would be useful, say you have a model that will have two or more instances of the merged part geometryand you want the some instances to have the same dimensions as the merged part and some instances you want to vary the dimensions. Use merge for the for the instances you want to be the same and use inheritance for the instances you want to vary. If you change the merged part dimensions and update the part with the merged geometry the geometry using merge will update to reflect the changes made but the geometry using inheritance will maintain the variable dimensions you defined.
To hide the sketches or other geometry use layers to hide those. If you have a layer for curves check it, it may already have the geometry from the sketches on it.
Thanks for the example. It basically asnwered my question. I have an "inherited in" part buried quite deep in my model so it would be very difficult to remove without redoding a huge amount of work. Is there any way to convert an "inherited" part to a just merged in if you haven't changed any of its dimensions. I would vastly prefer it being merged in, I just wasn't conscious of the distinction at the time I put it in.
In WF3 there is a Toggle Inheritancebutton on the feature dashboard that will changethe feature between a merge or inheritance. You can even switch an inheritance to a merge if you havevaried the dimensions. A dialog box will pop up warning you that the varied dimesions will be removed from the varied items table. The geometry will update accordingly. The main thing you need to beaware of are the parent/child relationships in the part.
In WF3 there is a Toggle Inheritancebutton on the feature dashboard that will changethe feature between a merge or inheritance. You can even switch an inheritance to a merge if you havevaried the dimensions. A dialog box will pop up warning you that the varied dimesions will be removed from the varied items table. The geometry will update accordingly. The main thing you need to beaware of are the parent/child relationships in the part.
That is really cool. I have some old parts that have an external inheritance that is family table driven. WF2 keeps giving me error messages about not being able to find the reference even though it will open the part & open the inheritance base. However, it won't update the inheritance without a manual redefine.
WF4 won't open the part unless I manually open the inheritance base. Being able to convert the inheritance to a merge solves all the problems and it works like I expect it to. Since there are about a dozen of these finished parts and I'm about to update all the base parts it looks like it's finally time to switch to WF4. Hopefully they will start shipping M160 soon (life is too short to mess with those downloads that always fail).
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