Assembly Configuration Tutorial - basic assembly question

alan_baljeu

https://learn.onshape.com/learn/course/assembly-configurations/inserting-instances-to-a-configured-assembly/exercise-inserting-part-and-assembly-configurations?page=2

I'm having a bear of a time on really easy stuff.  Using a reasonably powerful laptop with a good graphics card to work through this, and I'm finding it is extremely slow.  Scroll-zoom in/out is slow.  Clicking show/hide is slow.  Trying to mate with connectors is slow.  And with the task of mating the base of the cabinet to the cabinet using connectors, I'm struggling to get the right connectors.  I move the mouse to a corner and struggle to discern whether the connector displayed is the one for the face I want to mate.  Each corner of the model seems have 3 connectors defined on it with different planes.

Is this slowness a sign of anything wrong here?  Is there a trick to getting the right connectors?  Am I correct in thinking the part models would be better designed with fewer of these connectors?

billy2

I can't see the link, I haven't paid for it.

I don't experience any slow down when assembling. You may want to try and refresh the browser to clear up cache, I do this rarely. Some body in support can help you.

Onshape assemblies are the best in the CAD industry but are also different.

You'll have to understand the basics of a mate connector and how it assigns the motion between 2 parts. There's a lot that's different from older CAD systems and too difficult to type instructions here in a blog post.

Just some general notes about assemblies:
-don't create a mate connector to the assembly, they don't inherit in the next level up, this really messes things up.
-configurations inherit upward through the assembly chain, if you use configurations, every assy up the chain will propagate the configuration upward, but you can't miss an assy level.
-beware of incontext & configurations, incontext works in a top level assy but lower level incontext don't generate. To create web based parametric models, I'm chaining configurations up from part studios to control design changes.

The #1 benefit of assemblies in OS is that higher level assemblies inherit lower level assy mate connectors. This means I can have a working cylinder in a library, use it in a higher linkage with everything working and then drag this into a higher level assembly and it all works from the top level down to the library components. This allows you to build up assemblies quickly while keeping them organized.

It's disgusting that you have to download step files and build a working assembly from a supplier. With OS I could just reference a working assembly from a supplier, use it and build automated equipment so much faster than past CAD systems. I'm currently building out my own working library of standard assembly components so I can stop creating working sub-assys and get back to designing equipment.

The basic help in OS is also very good. I'd start there.

alan_baljeu

thanks for your input billy.

Also thanks to tech support for intervening.  there were some settings issues.