Breaking Up Large Multi-Part Studio Into Sub-Assemblies

don_b

Probably asked before so a link to the discussion might be what I need.......Newbie has built a large multi-part studio that now has performance issues....One suggestion is that it is improperly built (duh) and should be smaller sub-assemblies....I can duplicate the part studio and though rather tedious can delete parts to make a part studio of a piece to act as a sub-assembly part studio....I could do this again with a different part of the large drawing .....in the end I could copy as another document (to keep the old for reference) and delete the large multipart studio .....and then have 2 or 3 or 4 sub-assembly part studios. I would prefer to have the project all in one document to preclude update version issues (wanting automatic update) .....Is this a reasonable approach?......note this is a one-off hobby project ...no bill of material, exploded views, or any fluff that a professional job has is needed,  Just looking for accurate representation of parts in compound geometry and flat patterns.   Will this work to handle the performance issues as there still will be the same number of parts in the document? 

John_vd_Werff

In my experience performance is mostly affected by the number and type of features in a part studio. The number of tabs in a document does seem to have less impact.
Your suggested approach of copying the part studio and than deleting parts should work, as long as you actually delete all features for the parts you want to remove. You can put all the new part studio's in one document.

dirk_van_der_vaart

A partstudio with more than 100 features is bad practice.
So at first make a plan, what are you going to build, how many parts do you need, etc.
Make everything you design is fully constrained, you want to change sizes easy think about variables or configurations.
And if you still need more features in your partstudio then derive the part into a new partstudio and add the features.

And as with many job's, when you are finished you know how you should have don it.

dirk_van_der_vaart

With Ctrl Left click you can open a second view of the same document, Assembly in one and Part Studio in the other.


And this Webinar show's the in context design.
https://learn.onshape.com/courses/top-down-design-techniques-in-onshape

John_vd_Werff

In my experience performance is mostly affected by the number and type of features in a part studio. The number of tabs in a document does seem to have less impact.
Your suggested approach of copying the part studio and than deleting parts should work, as long as you actually delete all features for the parts you want to remove. You can put all the new part studio's in one document.

dirk_van_der_vaart

A partstudio with more than 100 features is bad practice.
So at first make a plan, what are you going to build, how many parts do you need, etc.
Make everything you design is fully constrained, you want to change sizes easy think about variables or configurations.
And if you still need more features in your partstudio then derive the part into a new partstudio and add the features.

And as with many job's, when you are finished you know how you should have don it.

don_b

Thank you for your response.....100 features is not very many for any real world design......as a suggestion for platform improvements I wonder if a step back in time as regard cad software configuration is something to consider.....I miss having all the features of a platform on one screen instead of  references to other screens (tabs, assemblies, part studios, documents)......I used to design with my assembly and detail drawings all on one screen and all of the various features were useable......I know this is still being improved upon and is an outstanding platform.....

dirk_van_der_vaart

With Ctrl Left click you can open a second view of the same document, Assembly in one and Part Studio in the other.


And this Webinar show's the in context design.
https://learn.onshape.com/courses/top-down-design-techniques-in-onshape

don_b

Thanks again......lots of little tricks to learn.......

don_b

I have done the exercise 
https://learn.onshape.com/courses/top-down-design-techniques-in-onshape

Lots of information to digest and using it is the key....practice practice....I have much to unlearn and there are various ways to attack a problem.
Reference my monster I am trying to fix.....is currently designed to my satisfaction however certainly not designed the way an experienced Onshape user would....I have only myself to blame but as an excuse I see many posts in the forum with similar problems so I am not the only one jumping in the deep end and regretting it.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/d351e872ec5bb1d4d7e2a18b/w/01bc4a46e44c6ba1e7a0d443/e/c331543779f91b0856e08e02 

don_b

still trying to get something to work with easily.....no matter what..... the "derived part" refers back to the original part studio which is a monster.....same for trying to edit in context  ....even when one deletes a part the deleted part entry saves the entry in the database with all the associated construction features.....removing the "errors" ends up removing features needed for the parts you want in the sub-assembly......

nick_papageorge073

I think the plan in your first post could work. But your later post in this thread implies to me that you kept the entire feature tree, and deleted parts using the “delete part” feature. Is that correct? That won’t do anything imo. You’d have to delete the actual features that resulted in the parts. 

As far as number of features, I have 500 and 600 in a couple of my main studios. The 500 is all sheetmetal. The 600 is all plastic parts, both injection molded and thermoformed. The performance is not super fast, but definitely very usable. I’d probably employ a different strategy to break it up further if I was starting over. 

don_b

There are so many errors, .....I would delete the part and then delete the errors ....but perhaps the errors with only one feature missing still used in other part drawing....not sure but in any case I did not end up with what I wanted....it is a real monster and I would guess many new users that are experienced cad designers make the same mistake.......I need to play with the export functions or  derived parts to see if I can isolate  parts into separate part studios then maybe work something out with the assembly tab.....I did a little playing with the assembly tab and in context but was frustrated by the reference back to the monster part studio which did not help.    It is somewhat frustrating that the right click for assembly tab does not have as much functionality for isolating parts and hiding features as the part studios have....I would think the code is already written.

On the positive side I was blown away by the "create drawings" routine....really amazing.....Very close to plotting my patterns for metal cutting.  Thank you for your help.

don_b

Here is where I am today
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/70a8069cda1b1d62e059af83/w/42f5c19975ed134eaec38c21/e/f13b902af1452403c0feacfd

Note: this is only about 3 ft of a 22 ft long semi-span so I will have to learn how to do this correctly If I have any hope of drawing this assembly in Onshape.