Please allow non-rigid sub assemblies to be added to groups

david_brophy

It would be great if non rigid sub-assemblies could be added to groups. 

Consider this document:

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/b309c378912a7dde8ca3a025/w/aaae5126aef52abcabdcb202/e/dceb7664bda32e85e95978fa?renderMode=0&uiState=65fdd012362fd31ffcd47663

Inside "Hinged assembly", the two parts are connected with a revolute mate. I would like to add "Ground" and "Base" to a group, however I get the error below:

S1mon

You can add one of the components of the subassembly to the group. Don't group the assembly and ground, try to group ground and base.

STEG

S1mon said:

You can add one of the components of the subassembly to the group. Don't group the assembly and ground, try to group ground and base.

You can't group a part from an subassembly, the whole subassembly is selected.

@david_brophy why do you want to use a Group instead of using a Mate bertween the base and the ground? 🤔

david_brophy

STEG said:

S1mon said:

You can add one of the components of the subassembly to the group. Don't group the assembly and ground, try to group ground and base.

You can't group a part from an subassembly, the whole subassembly is selected.

@david_brophy why do you want to use a Group instead of using a Mate bertween the base and the ground? 🤔

I'm alining my parts using master sketches, which is highly convenient. Each sub-assembly has a "master mate" in a well defined position, which I attach to a well defined point in a master sketch. I then know it's in exactly the right position relative to the global origin.

Many of my parts will be bonded together, I need to leave 2mm clearance for the adhesive. So there's 2mm gaps around all my parts. Sure, this is possible with offset mates, but this would be prone to error.

Especially with the windows that will be bonded into the walls... The walls have complex, multi-step rebates to accept trim, adhesive, and also the windows themselves. This is all planned perfectly with master sketches and everything is aligned exactly. To build this up in the assembly by attaching things together with mates would be a nightmare. They are all in exactly the right position when importing from the part studio, and I just want to lock them in place. 

My work-around is to insert the master sketches into the assembly, and mate the sub-assemblies to the sketches there. However that brings more problem, which needs further work-arounds. This could all be hugely simplified by being able to add non-rigid parts to groups.

Here's a section view of how the windows attach to the wall... I hope you can see that using a mate to attach it to some vertex on the wall wouldn't be ideal... Both the rebate in the wall and the location of the window are defined by the master sketch, so that's how I'd like to position the window in the assembly...

eric_pesty

I'm not sure I understand what the issue is... Why not just have a mate connector defined in the window assembly that mates directly with the recessed hole in the wall?

nick_papageorge073

What I've found worked well for me with subs and higher level asm:

-Get rid of all "fix" mates. IMO, fix should be removed from the program.
-Make an explicit MC as the first feature in each asm. Use that MC when mating lower level subs to higher level subs. In your scenario of a master sketch in the top level asm, you can mate the MC of the lower sub to the sketch itself.
-Get the featurescript multimateconnector. You can use this for super reliable placement of "modeled in place" parts within an assembly. This will create a MC for each part in your part studio, that you then mate with the explicit MC made in the asm in the prior step.
-There is a new functionally as of a few weeks ago that may be useful to you, where an entire part studio can be inserted into as asm as a fully constrained and rigid group of parts. They update automatically as you add/delete parts from the part studio. It's all or nothing, however, on which parts go to the asm.

david_brophy

Configuring a floating mate connector everywhere I need to connect things together is a lot of work. The components are in the right location when they're inserted into the assembly... it would really be much simpler to just be able to add them to a group without mates...