Make part studio changes reflect directly in Assembly?

andrew_beathard

Hi, I am modeling a frame made out of 80-20 with a swinging front door and an acrylic bottom plate. This the the desired end result: 

My design process is as follows: 

1. Make the frame out of 80 20 in part studio 1
2. Make hinge part in part studio 2
3. Mate them together in Assembly 1
4. Go back to the part studio 1 and add the blue acrylic plate
5. Go back to the assembly and import the blue plate.
   

You can probably guess my question at this point. How do I add the blue plate to the assembly so that it keeps its relative position as designed in the first part studio? I don't want to re-import all of the components from the part studio because then the hinge mates I added would be lost, and i'd rather not manually add all of the mates to get it back where I want it.

I learned CAD in Solidworks so the transition to OnShape is causing a little bit of confusion. Any input on how to improve this design would be appreciated! Thank you. -Drew

eric_pesty

When you insert your blue plate in the assembly, if you just pick it in the "insert" but don't click anywhere in the graphics area it will be inserted in the position it was designed in, after which you can use a "group" relation to fix it relative to the rest of the 80/20 base frame (assuming you haven't dragged the frame within you assembly already...)
Otherwise you can add an explicit mate connector (referencing something "simple", from one of your 80/20 parts) to the plate so you can use a fasten mate in your assembly easily.

One thing that take some getting used to coming from SolidWorks is that all assemblies are always "flexible" so you can't just throw things together in a sub-assembly to keep them in place, you have to actually use relations (but the "group" is a good shortcut for things designed within a single part studio).

andrew_beathard

Hi Eric, Thank you for your response. I think I must have already dragged the part studio in my assembly because when I do what you said it doesn't line up the way I want it to. Do you have a recommended method for restoring the part studio back to the original origin? At this point I have a lot of part studios in the assembly.

Also - quick follow up question. If I edit a part studio in context and add a new part to that studio, is there a way to make it show up in the assembly directly, or do I have to manually import that as well? Thank you!

nick_papageorge073

Find these two FS, they will help issues like this a lot, and are very robust: mate connector at origin, and multi mate connector.

eric_pesty

@andrew_beathard
The frame seems centered on the origin of you assembly so you could try re-inserting just the plate and it should be dropped at it's "designed" location (but might not be helpful if you already have other things mated to it etc). You might be able to use the triad manipulator in the assembly, you can snap it to geometry by dragging its origin and then snap that to the origin (but you need a "useful" reference to snap it to). A fasten mate with offset can also be viable but the easiest way to do this is probably to add one or more reference mate connectors in your part studio.

The "mutli mate connector" FS can really help here when you need to add a mate connector in the same location on multiple parts at once: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/5d8da63844bedebe5cff72b1/v/a2f8d68037aff39e9d20f7a1/e/11dcab8f665add80b9aced0a?jumpToIndex=719

Depending on what you need the assembly for, you could consider creating a composite part in your part studio and inserting that in your assembly. In this case anything added to the composite in the part studio will automatically show up in the assembly.

Mating stuff to 80/20 takes a bit of getting used to because there are no convenient "corners" to grab. The best reference to use is actually the hole in the center, it seems really cumbersome at first but with a bit of practice re-aligning and offsetting mate connectors in standard mates can be done quite quickly.
This somewhat related post might useful: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/87424#Comment_87424

andrew_beathard

Hi Eric, Thank you for your response. I think I must have already dragged the part studio in my assembly because when I do what you said it doesn't line up the way I want it to. Do you have a recommended method for restoring the part studio back to the original origin? At this point I have a lot of part studios in the assembly.

Also - quick follow up question. If I edit a part studio in context and add a new part to that studio, is there a way to make it show up in the assembly directly, or do I have to 

S1mon

When you add new parts to your part studio, they will not show up automatically in the assembly. You will need to insert them. Assuming you didn't move things around, you can get the new parts to show up in the same relative locations in the assembly as in the part studio. You'll want to add mates or at least group the new part(s) to the old parts. If I'm not using functional mates (e.g. inserting screws into holes), I will typically have a group mate for all the parts from a part studio. When I add part(s) to the assembly, I just redefine the group mate and add the new part(s).