Teachers - assembly evaluation

mrlefebvre101

Hi all.  I'm planning on using a hybrid approach to my design course this year.  I've been using Creo the last 6 years (Pro/E before the name change), and I'm still going to anchor my course there this year, but I'd like to work OnShape in - teaching a slightly different modeling paradigm, and in the process transitioning away from local-file based work to cloud work (this is really exciting for me).

If you're planning on teaching with OnShape this year (and I'm at the high school level), how do you think you're going to evaluate assemblies?  I want to make sure my students are appropriately mating the parts together and not just making them look like they're in the right place.  In Creo, I can quickly look at the model tree to see what parts are "packaged", and what ones are truly assembled (XYZ defined).  I'm not sure how to evaluate to the same level in OnShape.

Any and all thoughts/suggestions appreciated.  I'll probably start another thread about evaluating parts (or I guess part studios).  Looking forward to "meeting" the other teachers using OnShape and sharing best practices.

-Marc

nav

Hi @mrefebvre101  A few years ago I had the chance to teach CAD intro at the university, for the assembly module I gave my students the 3D model parts of a Lego technic truck and they had to assemble the truck, it was really fun and a lot of different types of mates had to be used, and you can easily check if it was properly assembled by just looking at the model.

shanshan

mrlefebvre101 There are much difference among onshape and some other traditional 3D softwares, as you said, onshape is based on cloud technology,so anything can be saved automaticly in time.Assembly mates are also different,in onshape there is only one mate between two parts, we need to judge the correct mate between them first,then add this mate to them , it is ok !There are many teaching videos in the onshape page , you can refer to them.
https://cad.onshape.com/help/index.htm#cshid=videos

3dcad

I don't have any experience in this field but I would choose the model so that you can test it by moving one part and all the others should move according to how they are connected (a robot for example).

Remember also that unlike other cads you can use history data to see what has been done. And you can ask to create a branch in certain point of design so you can go back at that point to check things.

Wouldn't it be cool for teachers if they could use compare -feature to compare documents? Not that much use in real world though..

_Ðave_

@mrlefebvre101 I'm sure theirs several ways but an easy method that comes to mind would be to fix one part then window pic the entire assembly and try to move it. Any part that is not mated, fixed or grouped will move. Then simply evaluate fixed or grouped parts which can be easily identified from the tree (see pic).