asssembly cut refusal

[JNR]

This is probably one of those really dumb questions.....
I have a LARGE assembly (entire aircraft cockpit, structure, avionics, dual HUDs, boresight tooling plus other bits of the airframe, etc.) I want to take a series of sections though a small area to show clearances graphically. I'm not going to save them - I just want to make some JPEGs. Sectioning takes way too long and causes everything to get resolved. I even hid everything except the stuff in the immediate area. So I made a plane and a big rectangle sketch and figured I would be smart and do an assemby cut. Then I could just change the plane offest, rebuild and go through the series of sections making a JPEG of each....

No matter what I do, on insert assembly feature, CUT (and boss) are grayed out.

What elementary bit of wisdom am I missing, guys?

I opened a play part, made a cylinder and inserted it several times into a new assembly to test and it worked fine there. I still had the big assembly open, so it can't be a restart SW thing.

John Richards Sr. Mech. Engr.
Rockwell Collins Flight Dynamics

There are only 10 types of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't.

 

[fatherfuh]

Did you ever think about Suppressing all components but those you need, and THEN doing a sectioned cut? Hiding parts really doesn't do anything but, well, hide the parts. Suppressing removes them from the immediate memory and hence the parts will not need to be resolved.

I don't really understand why SW's won't allow you to make a cut in an assembly. I personally have used the method before.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

I don't know why the assy cut doesn't work, but a quick workaround might be to create an eDrawing of the assy ... with unecessary parts suppressed or not ... & do your sectioning in there. It will probably mean a resolve when creating the eDrawing, but only once.

from (the City of) Barrie, Ontario.

Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film.

 

[SBaugh]

Make sure your not editing a part at the assembly level.

Also check to make sure your Large assemb ly mode is not turned on. - Tools\"Large assembly mode"

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376

 

[JNR]

Good responses, guys, thanks.

Can't suppress - using SmarTeam and it don't like you suppressing stuff. Unfortunately we have to hide. Not great, but it works. Theres's a problem when you check something back into the vault with files suppressed (obviously features are not an issue) where it drops them from the associated files list (BOM bsically). We tried having an "xall" configuration and saving as that last thing before check-in, but people still made occasional mistakes and it was too costly to recover (plus very time consuming). As a last resort I could supress then exit without filing, but it would be a mammoth task and in this case not worth it (and it only seems to affect this assembly!)

Not editing a part - good call, but one of the first things I checked on.

eDrawing route is a nice thought and would really be great, but we don't have eDrawings Pro and I seem to recall we would need that to section inside eDrawings? I like your style, CorBlimeyLimey, if you can't go over the mountain go round it or tunnel under it!! I you are ever in this area (Portland, Oregon) let me know and we should get together for some of our famous Pacific Northwest microbrews.....

John Richards Sr. Mech. Engr.
Rockwell Collins Flight Dynamics

There are only 10 types of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't.

 

[SBaugh]

Did you check the "Tools\Large assembly mode" to make sure that icon was not pressed in?

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376

 

[JNR]

Good point, Scott, I was assuming that it would just come up and tell me it had to resolve a few thousand parts to complete the operation like it usually does when you have things lightweight. That's probably the answer - I'll try it again later today if I get time just fer grins and report back. Oh, well.... makes an ass out of u and me every time don't it! If this is the answer I'm going to report it as a bug because that is inconsistent behaviour and it should give you the error/warning message (not that I will hold my breath...).

Actually I found a quick way to get what I wanted in the end. CorBlimeyLimey is going to like this one.... I just did a section view preview (which is really quick) then did a screen dump and cancelled the section view command. Took about 3 mintues to get the whole series of sections by moving the plane incrementally and another 5 or so to crop them and turn them into a PDF for the customer.

John Richards Sr. Mech. Engr.
Rockwell Collins Flight Dynamics

There are only 10 types of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

JNR
Thanks for the invite, I will try to take you up on that one day. But first priority is to have a trip back to "Good old Sussex by the sea"... I've not been back for over 12years so am well overdue.

Yes yes yes, I do like your workaround ... great lateral thinking ... I have already made an mht of this page for future reference.

You are right about the sectioning in eDrawing, but for the cost of a licence for the Pro version it would probably be worth it. Heck you could even buy a copy for the customer, send them an eDrawing file ... and let them section to their hearts content.

from (the City of) Barrie, Ontario.

Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film.

 

[JNR]

Sussex, nice.... I'm originally a Man O' Kent (Faversham). But moved a lot (Midlands - near Nottingham, N Wales, Yorkshire, Bedfordshire). ...and just to burst a few bubbles - Robin Hood never existed and nor did Robert Of Loxley or any other alias......



Been lucky enough to get back a few times to see family - specially on the back of some business trips. You will find things have changed.

Been here since '79 and a US citizen since 1992.

Back to business. Unfortunately we don't look like getting eDrawings Pro for a while. I think that Office would be a good investment, but we have other priorities on the budget. Our Eng. dept. budget for annual licence fees alone is a couple of hundred thousand. Of course that includes EE, software, systems, etc. We have around 30 seats of SolidWorks (31, I think) mostly in ME plus a few other areas. Maybe we can get a couple of seats next year. We tend to send drawings out a PDF's these days. which works extremely well, but the more we include vendors in the design review process, the better it would be to get eDrawings Pro for the mark-up capability. Once we launch SmartFlow for drawing sign-off and ECO control it might make ecconomic sense even for internal use. As I understand it, a self-executable made with Pro can mark-up(?) Since all our sign-off routing goes through one focal point, she could make the eDrawings even if we did not have a copy at every SW seat.

I'm getting way off the thread now, so I'll shut up.

However it might make an interesting and informative new thread to update on what people are doing in these areas today.





John Richards Sr. Mech. Engr.
Rockwell Collins Flight Dynamics

There are only 10 types of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't.