Deformable Parts or Simple Extruded Stock Lengths with Partlist

[hudson888]

Hello Guys,

It's been a while, but today I've a request to do something other than by usual fair and I'm frankly surprised that it isn't more readily supported than it appears to be.

What I want to achieve is simply to define one part one time for a standard extrusion and let the length be determined at the point of application by means of some kind of expression perhaps linked to an attribute so that the parts list will tell me what particular length of the stuff I've decided to cut on any given occasion.

What I've managed to do thus far is to define the expression called 'length' with a value for the amount of the stock that I want to use, and the attribute expression in the form of...

ug_setPartAttrValue("DESCRIPTION",format("STOCK EXTRUSION %0.0fmm ",length))

so if the length is 900 then then we have an attribute called DESCRIPTION with the value "STOCK EXTRUSION 300mm". That was the easy part.

Now what I really want to do is something like to define a deformable part for any given length of the stuff that I could wish for that drives the attribute properly. The deformable part works fine, but as anyone who knows a thing or two about attributes would tell you the actual expression for the changing length is propagated into the assembly when the deformable part is added thus being invisible in terms of changing the attributes.

Somehow I think this might be unsupported, but it seems like such a simple thing to want that I do wonder if I'm right about that?

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum

 

[JohnRBaker]

So you want the Length of the Deformable part DRIVING the value of the Attribute?

You also seem to imply that there are a finite number of lengths. If this is true, why are you not using Family Table parts?

BTW, welcome back. Hope that your absence was not something that we should be concerned about.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.com/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[hudson888]

Thanks John,

I'll live, but the real problem for part families is the the value of the attribute comes from a set of simple formulas designed to triangulate a structure with fixed spacings that aren't horribly predictable.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum