Modeling using a coworkers part

[magneplanar]

Mcad viewers,

So here is the scenario. Project is transferred. Sales believes the work needed is a simple feature addition for the new model. You open the part and half the features are suppressed, geometry errors everywhere, and the need for off tool in half the time you are going to need. Oh, and the part crashes with the unregenerated round feature that adds rounds to every corner.

What strategy would you use to get started on a part like this?

I run the model player and see if I can make sense of all the build up, cut away , rebuild, recut and decide if I can make this from scratch rather than a tweaking.

anyone run into this?

have a good one...

M

 

[mcgowanp]

M, Welcome to the wonderful world of Concept models that become frozen released files!!!!


It depends on the part and the projects timeline, if its about to be released and there are not going to be any changes later on then if you can just tweak it. If you think that there will be further tooling refinements, manufacturing changes, or just revisions to the product then its much better to redo from scratch now.


Also if this product has not gone to manufacturing, and the component is being molded in some fashion or machined/CNC'd. Then a really crap model like what you have descrobed can cause all kinds of problems during creation of molds, tool paths etc. Even if its measured on a CMM later on and you use scantools to compare geo it can cause problems.


Bottom line if the seedof the devil (that would be marketing and sales), can be persuaded then take the time and get the information right now, rather than later when there could be greater time constraints.


Hope this helps,


Paddy

 

[magneplanar]

Paddy,

Actually, the part is in production and the mold change will be a nightmare if I rebuild because the surfaces of the mold wont regenerate. That means the mold maker will have to copy geometry for anything that is new. they love that hahah

the problem stems from a lack of knowledge about family tables and instances. Each person that works on the model cuts out the unique features for the last model.
With a feature tree this long you would expect it to be a complete ID of a product haha.

Anyway, thanks for the advice...

cheers

M

 

[Darraign]

I would definitely redo the model. I have run across the same scenario and I always redo them. Better to be safe than sorry. Even if you think its just a one time fix, it always seems to come back to you, as if you were the original designer of the mess.

 

[pjw]

Backup your old mold model and its children i.e. your part. Recreate your part correctly. I assume that the surfaces, vertices, edges etc are going to be the same even though they will have different IDs. Make sure your part is numbered under the old number and pull your mold model into session. It will fail. This is where your backed-up model comes ino. Open another session of Pro/E and you can then compare references from the old model and simply reroute to your new model. I use this method all the time and never lose any features due to remodelling a part.


Phil

 

[markp]

If you have the time, make a new model. If that part is used in an assembly it will just create problems when loading it. Better to have as many good parts and assemblies as possible. It's a PITA but in the long run it is the best way to do things. We hired a couple of contractors that were the absolute worst at modeling. When I went to check their drawings, I would just take the time to either fix the parts and the drawings or make new parts.

 

[mneal]

Ay the joys of model inherting.My advice, back it up and recreate you are way ahead of the game, it never seems to truly be the "last tweak". Also after you are done with new part, make a IGIS file of old part and set color to something. Next make adummy assembly with your old and newly created part. Makes for an easy way to insuregeometry are the samesame, then tweak away on a good model.