Releases and appearance configurations

AEC

Hi everyone,

I need some advise here... I'm releasing a couple of injection mold parts, and up until actually releasing the parts, I've had no issue using configurations to show said parts in different appearance "display states".

The problem I'm having is that in the drawings where I refer to the released parts, these configurations are locked, meaning that I cannot change configuration because I am referring to a released part.

This is fair of course if the configurations changed the geometry, however in my case it's only illustrative to convey information through the drawings.

So I'm in a bit of a pickle. If I change the reference in the drawings to any other configuration, I am no longer referring to the released revision, and if I change the drawing to refer to the released revision I only see the configuration it's released with.

Any ideas how to approach this? I'm kinda looking down the path of lines only drawings, and trying to convey the information through separate step files, exported from each respective configuration (as I would have to anyway though)... it just seems rather clunky not having the referenced coloring available in the drawings, and I'm afraid it'll also be more difficult for the engineers at the molding company to decipher.

I hope this makes sense, kindly ask away if I haven't explained my problem well enough.

Thanks in advance & happy new year!

martin_kopplow

I can actually see how that is an issue. I have used color coding in the past (E.G. for assembly instructions) and was not even aware of it being a problem in OS. I have no solution, but thank you for the hint.

AEC

martin_kopplow said:

I can actually see how that is an issue. I have used color coding in the past (E.G. for assembly instructions) and was not even aware of it being a problem in OS. I have no solution, but thank you for the hint.

And thank you for the reply, I ended up having to manually refer to the same part revision in all drawings, this will definitely come back and bite me when I have to update anything... gotta be very cautious about that project in the future I wish there was a way to configure appearance that wasn't coupled with configurations so the drawings could refer to the same part revision but different "appearance configurations".

martin_kopplow

In my other CAD, parts inherit their model appearance when inserted into drawings, but once changes are made to the appearance of parts in drawings, they override the inherited appearance, though only in drawings. When parts are edited in the model later, they keep their appearance in drawings. That is very helpful indeed.

NeilCooke

Hi @AEC - I've seen your support ticket on the same subject. You are right in what you are saying and there is no workaround at present. The only thing you can do is to release all the configs together, but then they will have different part numbers. 

Are these different views on the same sheet? You could also reference the same version of the release, but each view showing the different colours cannot be projected views, they must be all inserted individually. You can then have one view which is the released part and other views showing the same version. You just have to be careful when updating the views when a new release is created.

Another option (which is only good if the number of coloured surfaces is small) is to use the hatch region feature in Drawings.

AEC

NeilCooke said:

Hi @AEC - I've seen your support ticket on the same subject. You are right in what you are saying and there is no workaround at present. The only thing you can do is to release all the configs together, but then they will have different part numbers. 

Are these different views on the same sheet? You could also reference the same version of the release, but each view showing the different colours cannot be projected views, they must be all inserted individually. You can then have one view which is the released part and other views showing the same version. You just have to be careful when updating the views when a new release is created.

Another option (which is only good if the number of coloured surfaces is small) is to use the hatch region feature in Drawings.

Hi Niel,

Thanks for following up on this

To be exact, I'll describe the layout:

I have a part that has a configuration for showing surface texturing, this is done by using appearance to color the faces, I then note in the corresponding drawing referring to the differently colored faces to describe what the colored areas are. In another drawing for that same part, same revision (or should be), I'm showing cores, or parting lines/surfaces. Issue is of course that the release done to show the surface texturing was done while the part was in that configuration. To show any other configuration, even if it's only appearance difference, I have to change configuration in the part and re-release.

My revisioning has both part and drawing revisioning separate from each other, this means that the drawing can step in revision while the part stays the same, i.e. if there are corrections to a drawing it doesn't affect the part thus only drawing increases when releasing.

So in the drawings I refer to which part revision the drawing is referring to while also noting the drawing revision of course.

The workaround I've had to do is to override the part revision in the drawing so that it appears that all the drawings refer to the same part revision. This of course will catch me at some point and cost quite a lot of coffee to navigate. Not only in the current project, but definitely also in others.

It would be awesome if the appearance could be independant of the part revisioning in drawings so that you could freely change appearance or "display state" in a drawing that referred to a released part without haviing to go through the trouble I've had. I cannot figure out if this would compromise any other features in the software of course.

Thanks again & best regards

AEC

NeilCooke said:

Hi @AEC - I've seen your support ticket on the same subject. You are right in what you are saying and there is no workaround at present. The only thing you can do is to release all the configs together, but then they will have different part numbers. 

Are these different views on the same sheet? You could also reference the same version of the release, but each view showing the different colours cannot be projected views, they must be all inserted individually. You can then have one view which is the released part and other views showing the same version. You just have to be careful when updating the views when a new release is created.

Another option (which is only good if the number of coloured surfaces is small) is to use the hatch region feature in Drawings.

Forgot to answer your question

The views are in different sheets, each drawing I have displays a different subject to keep the overview, they're not even in sheets but separate drawings (which I think I'll change to one drawing per part and sheets instead for future projects)