Modify inserted assembly

michael_marriam

I'm designing a building.  My intent was to start with a generalized wall assembly, comprised of a sill plate, double top plates, and studs located 16" on center.  Than create a new assembly for each specialized wall, insert the generic wall assembly and place windows and doors where needed to create each specialized wall.  Problem is I'm not able to figure out how to delete studs from the imported generic assembly without deleting the same stud in all the specialized walls I'm trying to use it in.  Its like I need to decompose an assembly into its constituent parts when its imported so that some parts can be changed without changing the original assembly.  I've experimented with the "create part studio in context" and "edit in context" commands to no avail.

shawn_crocker

@michael_marriam

I have two ideas to accomplish this.

1:
Setup the default wall as parts in the same assembly that you were going to be putting in the sub assembly walls. Group mate the parts so you can move them around like an assembly. You can copy and paste them and a new group mate will automatically hold the pasted parts together like a new assembly. Once a group of parts has been customized to your liking, you can select them, right click on them from the assembly tree, and select "move to new subassembly". It's what you are doing now but in reverse. Start by setting up and then turn the setup into an assembly.

2:
Create your default wall assembly as you have done and start arranging them in the top level assembly. When you encounter the need to customize one and make it different from the rest, right click on the wall assembly tab and select duplicate. In the top level assembly you can replace one of the walls with the duplicated wall. Now you can change that one without affecting the original. I think both ways are about the same work but I would choose the first one because I feel it's more imediate and flexible.

My workflow of choice:

Create a part studio and build the default wall there. Insert the entire part studio into the top level assembly and group the parts. This makes it easier if you need to customize a wall section that may need parts to be chopped down to make room for other things. You can duplicate the part studio and do more intensive edits easier, then drop the entire duplicated part studio into the assembly and group.  Or create incontext edits of the duplicated part studio.  I would not concern myself with the fact that many parts are being replicated instead of reused at this stage. When it comes time to properly group wall sections by moving to new sub-assemblies, then I would work at instancing everything so that the Bom doesn't contain hundreds of parts at a qty of 1.  This way its easy to stay focused on creating the design quickly without stopping to create patterns and mates just to have to change and delete them as the design progresses.

shawn_crocker

@michael_marriam

I have two ideas to accomplish this.

1:
Setup the default wall as parts in the same assembly that you were going to be putting in the sub assembly walls. Group mate the parts so you can move them around like an assembly. You can copy and paste them and a new group mate will automatically hold the pasted parts together like a new assembly. Once a group of parts has been customized to your liking, you can select them, right click on them from the assembly tree, and select "move to new subassembly". It's what you are doing now but in reverse. Start by setting up and then turn the setup into an assembly.

2:
Create your default wall assembly as you have done and start arranging them in the top level assembly. When you encounter the need to customize one and make it different from the rest, right click on the wall assembly tab and select duplicate. In the top level assembly you can replace one of the walls with the duplicated wall. Now you can change that one without affecting the original. I think both ways are about the same work but I would choose the first one because I feel it's more imediate and flexible.

My workflow of choice:

Create a part studio and build the default wall there. Insert the entire part studio into the top level assembly and group the parts. This makes it easier if you need to customize a wall section that may need parts to be chopped down to make room for other things. You can duplicate the part studio and do more intensive edits easier, then drop the entire duplicated part studio into the assembly and group.  Or create incontext edits of the duplicated part studio.  I would not concern myself with the fact that many parts are being replicated instead of reused at this stage. When it comes time to properly group wall sections by moving to new sub-assemblies, then I would work at instancing everything so that the Bom doesn't contain hundreds of parts at a qty of 1.  This way its easy to stay focused on creating the design quickly without stopping to create patterns and mates just to have to change and delete them as the design progresses.

michael_marriam

@shawn_crocker thank you for your response.  I'll try both ways and see what I learn.