Power Copy Help

[demonknight]

At my place of work we pin our cabinets together. We use a power copy to help speed up the process for us engineers. I am currently working to improve the power copy and I'm completely lost and the resources I have found aren't great by any stretch of the imagination so I was hoping one of you could hold my hand through this.

Here it is as detailed as I can explain it.

Currently our process for our power copy goes as such:

1. Place planes on all the faces needed by the power copy. (5 total)

2. Select the plane located on the panel face (Pnl_Face).

3. Select the direction the pins will go (actually it’s the opposite direction the pins will go) by pointing an arrow.

4. Select the plane located on the bottom of the panel (Pnl_Thkns_2).

5. Point the arrow down (Away from Pnl_Thkns_1).

6. Select the plane located on the left end of the panel (First_Pin_Joint).

7. Point the arrow toward the right (toward Second_Pin_Joint).

8. Select the plane located on top of the panel (Pnl_Thkns_1)

9. Point the arrow down (toward Pnl_Thkns_2)

10. Select the plane located on the right end of the panel (Second_Pin_Joint)

11. Point the arrow to the right (Away from First_Pin_Joint)

Im trying to slim it down to look something more like what is listed below.

1. Select panel face (Pnl_Face). (As you can see I did not create any planes. I don’t understand why we have to do this. Any other operation in Catia that needs a plane will create it for itself.)

2. Point arrow in the direction that the pins will go. (The actual direction not the opposite direction)

3. Select the top of the panel (Pnl_Thkns_1).

(I do not understand why I must select a directional arrow. If the designer gives 2 extremities should the software not be able to put the pins between those extremities? If you tell it to pad from one plane to another it handles this operation without issue.)

4. Select the bottom of the panel (Pnl_Thkns_2).

5. Select left of the panel (First_Pin_Joint).

6. Select right of the panel (Second_Pin_Joint).

So far all I have been able to do is change the order which you select the plane (I know like 3 clicks to do so, but its atleast a step in the right direction)

Can someone help me try to figure this out?

I will try to check in as much as I can and answer any questions which are risen.

-me

 

[tuzoenduro]

It would help if you could provide us with an example of what you are working on, a file that we can see or something.

Normally the geometries needed to instanciate your powercopy depend on the geometries that were used to generate the original part (the one you made your powercopy from) so you have to clean these up if you want to accelerate your process.
If I'm not too mistaken, the whole selecting planes and then adjusting the arrow direction can come up depending if on your powercopy part you construct on a face or on a plane (thus giving you a different padding direction f.e.)
But I disgress, giving you info like this is a little ambiguous because I don't really know what you are working with.

Regards,

luis

 

[demonknight]

Here is the one that I corrected the order on.

-me

 

[demonknight]

If ya'll could maybe take a look at that and walk me through correcting it I would really appreciate it.

-me

 

[tuzoenduro]

What version of CATIA are you using?? Just to know if I can open it at home (I have a student version to work on my thesis at home but it's only R14) or if I have to open it at the lab.

regards

luis

 

[demonknight]

ummm what ever is the newest. R18 i think.

-me

 

[tuzoenduro]

Damn, no good. I've got R17SP4 over here, haven't gotten R18 installed yet...
hmmm

 

[demonknight]

Ok so I havent been working too hard on it, but I'm really stuck. I really apparently have no idea what is going on... I know I'm not really saying alot here, but this was somewhat of a bump to see if someone else might read my story and know exactly how to help me...

-me

 

[jackk]

Demonknight....

Reading through your set of instructions, I guess you're "instantiating" a PowerCopy that has previously been created by someone else.

If you want to change the steps and simplify the steps, you need to create a new PowerCopy based on your cabinet pinning process. If you're not that familiar with using CATIA, this won't be easy.

Based on your "no idea" comment, I'd suggest you bring in someone to improve the process and develop a new PowerCopy (or a macro) for you. The VAR you purchased CATIA from should be able to help with this.

 

[itsmyjob]

if you want to use the face of the solid as an input instead of the isolated plane, then you have to build your geometry with the faces...

I did a replace and changed the definition of the publuication and rebuild all incorrect construction after all that...

Then i redifined your powercopy...

Check the new file.

Eric N.
indocti discant et ament meminisse periti ​

 

[itsmyjob]

i did not pay attention to the order you want to select the face and the naming convention... you will have to do that yourself in the powercopy definition...

Eric N.
indocti discant et ament meminisse periti ​

 

[itsmyjob]

one more thing...

My powercopy is as strong (weak) as yours... if your pad are not oriented the same way (according to XYZ axis) then some correction will have to be done in 2 sketches in order to bring everything in place...

With some work, this can be solved... but it needs experience and time.... and it is friday evening I am going in week end, sorry !

Eric N.
indocti discant et ament meminisse periti ​

 

[demonknight]

Thank you all. I'll take a look at this... I'm familiar with the basics of Catia, but the Advanced features are still a mystery.

I dont know what you mean by VAR, but I'm supposing you mean vendor. If i could refer to someone else for heal i would just tell them to do it for me, but the Catia support here is terrible at best.

-me

 

[demonknight]

Ok so I've tweaked around and (with yall's help) have the power copy acting like I want it to. The result I get is exactly what I'm looking for. It is where I click on faces (not set up planes). The order is logical and I dont have to orient any arrows (as far as my tesing has shown).

My remaining qustions are:

1. Is there a way to make it not show directional arrows off of the faces/surfaces since I apparently dont need them. (except of course the one showing the direction the pins should go).

2. My results are perfect when applied to a product. The window of the Power copy is all messed up though. To get the result to do what I want I had to edit the sketches to "trick" the results. Any idea whats going on here?

-me

 

[itsmyjob]

1) no

2) see what I said above... it need time to fix.

Solution: you should try to define the position of the profile of the pad with a point between (intersect.2 and intersect.4), the ratio you have to do the math...

I would also look at the V (z) position of the circle center in sketch.1 as the dimension may bring the point outside the plate...

Solution: create a point middle (intersect.2 and intersect.5) to fix this...

Have fun, I go in vacation !

Eric N.
indocti discant et ament meminisse periti ​

 

[demonknight]

So I did some testing and have an issue that yall might be able to explain to me.

When I play with the tool in the test product ive built it appears to work fine, but when I try to use in to do actual work it wont work. I have a feeling this may be because we dont save our parts in the conventional way. We have a seperate parts management system. I think this is somehow messing up the ability to select surfaces instead of planes.

-me

 

[itsmyjob]

I used this powercopy with a default new CATPart and it worked well... my option is turned OFF, I do not use Hybrid modeling.

I did not work at a CATProduct level.

Eric N.
indocti discant et ament meminisse periti ​