De-activating large amounts of part in Catia

[JMichienzi]

thread560-290845

Further to the quoted thread, I'm wondering if anyone has come up with a better solution to de-activating large amounts of parts at once.

I attempted to use the suggested method of creating a icon for activate/deactivate. I was successful at first, but after closing and reopening the product, it doesn't seem to want to work, and just generates an error saying 'You can't deactivate this element.' when I click on the icon. I've also tried activating parts instead, and also creating icons for JUST activating or deactivating, all with no luck. Very frustrating, especially since it's worked before!

I did also attempt to write a VBA script to do this for me. I had some success, but ultimately had to give up. The issue I ran into is that in order to load up the required parameter to deactivate a part instance, I either had to expand the instance in the tree first by clicking on the plus icon (strange, I know), or put the part into design mode. If I have to go through all the individual parts and hit 'plus' on the icon, than it defeats the point of writing the macro (Side note: using the tree expand command did not load the parameters). I also can't put parts into design mode - the whole reason I'm deactivating a large amount of parts is because I connect through a painfully slow VPN connection, and when I go to create a joint in a kinematics part, it wants to load everything into design mode to check the constraints. All the constraints are between a skeleton part, so not sure why Catia needs to do this, but I have to deactivate all parts but the skeleton, or I end up waiting for many hours for a 2000+ part assembly to load details I don't need (which usually just results in a Catia crash anyway).

Running V5R21, SP2

Any thoughts? Help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Jon

 

[ferdo]

Hi,

In that thread which you mentioned, did you notice my last post? Is it working for you? Do you have a search criteria when you select parts to deactivate (or activate)?

Regards
Fernando

https://picasaweb.google.com/102257836106335725208

https://picasaweb.google.com/103462806772634246699/

 

[JMichienzi]

Hi Ferdo,

I did notice your last post, but didn't quite understand (or it didn't work for me). I selected the 'Product Selection' under the tool bar, and can select parts in the viewer, but it still won't let me disable more than one part. Any thoughts as to what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks!

Jon

 

[ferdo]

In few days I will have CATIA again, I will try to record a video.

Regards
Fernando

https://picasaweb.google.com/102257836106335725208

https://picasaweb.google.com/103462806772634246699/

 

[tbuelna]

One thing you can do is select the option to load a product using cache management. This will load lightweight (visualization or CGR) versions of each product or part.

 

[JMichienzi]

Thanks for the replies everyone!

Just to provide a bit more detail as to my problem, as it will likely answer some comments and questions:

As of right now, all parts do load in visualization mode (CGRs). Because of my slow connection to the server, this is really the only way to load up the assembly I'm working with. The issue I have is that the assembly is a kinematics assembly. When creating certain joints (specifically, any of those joints that create a corresponding constraint), Catia determines that the entire assembly needs to be in design mode in order to check existing constraints. This is despite the fact that all joints (and their resulting constraints) are between multiple instances of a single skeleton part (so, in theory, Catia should only need to load that one part into design mode).

In order to work around this, the only way I've found is to disable all parts that I don't need when creating joints (which, is every part but the skeleton, totalling over 2000 parts). I tried publishing elements in the skeleton part, but it still wanted to load up everything in design mode. This is when I resorted to a macro to do the job for me.

On that topic: I did end up getting the macro I wrote to work. As I mentioned previously, the issue I was having is that the parameter I needed to modify in each instances of a part didn't load by default. However, by disabling all of the components which contain all the parts of my kinematics assembly, and then activating them again, it loaded up the parameter for all of the children, and therefore allowed me to run the macro.

I'd still be interested in other ways of obtaining the same result.

 

[ferdo]

Using Filtered Selection...



Regards
Fernando

https://picasaweb.google.com/102257836106335725208

https://picasaweb.google.com/103462806772634246699/