Product Outline - a well-kept secret for large assemblies 1

[scotty7]

Dealing with large assemblies can be a pain. We have just tripped over a function called Product Outline. This creates a tesselated representation of the assembly on a specific layer (varies from rev to rev) which is very lightweight - an assembly that needs 64 bit, 12GB + footprint normally can be visualised in a normal 32 bit box for a 1-2 GB footprint (depending on feature complexity, etc). Brilliant functionality, so how come no-one in Siemens knew about it and told us about it in the 4 years we have had the product, with full-time on-site support and a lot of wailing about handling large assemblies? Anyone else use it? It's in Assemblies > Context control. Set up with "Define Product Outline", then view with "Show Product Outline". The tesselation is in the "entire part" ref set.

 

[jackley]

Looks like you need an advanced assemblies license for this. Just a FYI. (we do not have one *frown*)

Justin Ackley
Designer

 

[ewh]

You need to get to the Users Group meetings if you can. John Baker has demo'd this capability. Quite impressive!

Believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare. - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]

 

[hudson888]

Yes it isn't bad, but on the other hand most advanced assemblies users have reps turned on at saving so that there is already a standard way to achieve pretty much the same thing. That is to say I don't know that it saves you much on a regular basis.

Best regards

Hudson

 

[JohnRBaker]

What the 'Product Outline' allows you to do is to open an assembly WITHOUT loading ANY components and yet you will still see an 'Outline' of your assembly that you can then open only those components actually needed for the tasks that you're going to perform. And as the actual components are loaded, the 'Outline' of the individual components will be replaced with the display of the real parts so that the overall appearance of the assembly remains intact, even if only a small percentage of the Components were actually opened.

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

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/