Cleanup old libraries

[RobijnD]

Into the past we’ve made new parts (for example screws), without the knowledge that we have to replace or substitute them. So a screw is located just somewhere at the x, y or z axis and not at the absolute point.

We want to clean up this mess. So everything is nice orientated, same good drawing, easy to substitute.

But…
We want to use the same partname because it is linked to our plm system and we start a lot of times from old assemblies.
Also, by changing the position, all our assemblies will be messed up.

Does someone have a suggestion how this can be solved?
Is there a function available that searches to all assemblies and re-orientate it?
Or something else...?

We currently use nx5.

Thanks a lot for your suggestions,

Robijn

 

[looslib]

Well, if you used mating conditions in your assemblies, then re-orientating the detail parts would not destroy the assembly. Using absolute positioning for components in an assembly is asking for problems!


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[hudson888]

Robijn,

Ben above is probably right if you have persistent mating conditions for everything. But I guess few organisations would take the risk of making that assumption.

Otherwise the system will not do this for you automatically. Which means you will have to do a manual reposition and the matter for discussion is how best to facilitate this.

The solution to me seems simple and straightforward but you may not like it because it probably won't meet all your criteria. I think you're going to want to name the files differently.

Before starting I'll mention that I would create screws and fasteners as part families where possible with remembered mating conditions (or positioning constraints). We also set these up using palettes so they're easy to find and quick to add. When some users decide to re-do the odd assembly to take advantage of a component array etc this will come in handy.

We use versioning in native or where I've worked with Teamcenter you can always revise a part, even if it is a fastener. What I'd say to you as you need some mechanism to see and compare new with old. I would therefore suggest at a minimum naming the new and old fastener files slightly differently with the old ones getting a legacy suffix such as _old. Either way when the assembly is next opened there will be an obvious requirement to reposition all the fasteners.

You could keep two versions of the fastener geometry in each file one at the desired absolute location by default and the other at the older co-ordinates. Even placing two saved work co-ordinate systems as a canned repositioning matrix in a saved reference set would probably be very helpful, (with less geometry required). Whatever you use you would employ reference sets to maintain as separate versions until you're sure the legacy positions are completely expunged.

I should also mention that the other way to roll is with a slightly different new fastener naming system for the new versions just to use a _ in place of a - so that users will be aware of it but nothing changes until you want it to. Again you employ the touch it fix it doctrine that says leave everything alone that does no harm until the drawing is next revised. The idea of having a known translation matrix saved in the newer files would I think be still be helpful.

Anyway those are a few ideas to make it easier to weed out older fasteners with the odd co-ordinate systems. Apart from that I'd just say many organisations have your problem and often they simply get away with ignoring it in perpetuity.

Talk to your users first. If they're linking anything from these fasteners as some mold designers occasionally do then at the very least I'd ensure that the legacy versions of those fasteners are available for as long as they're required to maintain those links. I very much suspect that if you make a change over otherwise then you're taking a risk of losing the links.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

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