Exploded Assemblies

[wblanchard]

I am new to Solid Edge having worked extensivly in Pro-E. I have an top level assembly consisting of one part which is the base part and an assembly made up of subassemblies and parts. The single part is a casing to which everthing else is loaded into. I want to explode the assemble in the TLA from the base part but can not see how to easlily do this. This should be a simple 1 min operation but the only way that I can see to do this is by expanding the pathway and select every single part individually. What am I missing? By the way I am on ST4.

 

[Enginerd9]

From what I understand, you need to change the "environment." For example, ProE has modules which need to be active in order to do certain things (mechanica, mold flow, etc.), and it's similar to SolidEdge with what they refer to as environments.

First, on your ribbon at the top, find the "Tools" tab. From there, you will see an icon which looks like a camera over a strip of film called "ERA." This is your "explode, render, animate" environment. Click that and you can now begin to explode your assembly.

Once you've activated ERA, functionally it is similar to ProE... but it may take some time to learn the ropes.

Let me know if that helps! Thanks!

Experience: accumulated knowledge over time.

Talent: the ability to use experience.

Which is more valuable?

 

[wblanchard]

Eginerd9, thanks for the reply. I had gone to the ERA enviroment (did not know that was what it was called) and selected "Explode". From there the prompt tells me to "click on the parts to be exploded". When I try to select the second component in the Pathway (my assembly in the TLA) which I want to pull out of the casing I get the "no can do" symbol. If I expand the assembly and its subassemblies in the Pathway I can select all thirty something individual parts and move them as a unit, but I would have thought that I could just select the assembly upper level assembly.

 

[Enginerd9]

I've been playing with ERA since this post and I'm actually... not sure.

It seems ST6 doesn't allow me to explode individual components which are more than 2 sub-assemblies down. I also haven't figured out how to edit an explode step to include items I may have missed in the original operation. It's almost like I have to know exactly where I want to end up before I even get started playing with it.

I also can't seem to select the components / assemblies from the tree on the left, which is I think what you were saying? If I figure that one out, I'll post again.

Experience: accumulated knowledge over time.

Talent: the ability to use experience.

Which is more valuable?

 

[wblanchard]

Enginerd9
Thanks again for the reply. Yes I keep looking also, maybe will stumble upon the solution.