Welcome to the Onshape forum! Ask questions and join in the discussions about everything Onshape.
First time visiting? Here are some places to start:- Looking for a certain topic? Check out the categories filter or use Search (upper right).
- Need support? Ask a question to our Community Support category.
- Please submit support tickets for bugs but you can request improvements in the Product Feedback category.
- Be respectful, on topic and if you see a problem, Flag it.
If you would like to contact our Community Manager personally, feel free to send a private message or an email.
Why is inserting a view of a configured assembly instance into a drawing not possible?
I have created a configured assembly for a piano hinge that needs a drawing to show how it is derived (cut from) from a vendor purchased piano hinge.
The "Insert view" function will only allow selections of part/assemblies from document tabs; an instance of the configured assembly is not supported.
The only way I found to create views of the configured assy instance is to create a view of the parent assembly an hide all the other parts except the piano hinge parts. This is very cumbersome because parts must be selected one at a time; I cannot select parts by area selection.
I also tried moving the instance into a new subassy, but this messes up the assy mates that define the mechanism behavior.
Is there a "clever way" to accomplish create a drawing of a configured assembly instance?
Answers
Hi StephenG,
If you have set up configurations, you should get an insert view dialogue like this. Could you share what you see?
Yes, it is possible to create a drawing view from the Assembly tab that defines a configured assembly, but the config state in the assembly tab is not the configuration state when instanced into another assembly.
If I change the configuration of the assembly instance I want a drawing view of it to reflect the configuration change. This is why it makes sense to support creating a drawing view of an assembly instance. The same should also hold true for instanced parts with configurations.
Each tab has its configuration. This means that if a configured part is inserted in an assembly and this installed part is also to be configured, a configuration must be created in the assembly tab.
A "phantom" sub-assembly should work…
Moving the hinge to a sub-assy should not mess up the mates.
It would be nice to have a way to do this "natively" as it can be tricky to make sure you are using the correct configuration on a drawing.
Creating a "phantom" assembly (Move to new subassembly) of the configured assembly instance works around the inability to create a drawing view directly of a configured assembly instance. It certainly is a lot easier than creating a view of the parent assembly and hiding all the parts except those that make up the configured assembly instance.
I was able to create the drawing that describes how to derive the hinge from off-the-shelf hardware.
However, this method does come with some complications:
o The parent assembly structure gets an additional layer that doesn't make sense. An assembly instance that contains just one instance of an assembly.
o Any additional constraints that were added in the parent assembly to further restrict motion within the parent assembly, along with named positions are not copied into the subassembly.
o You have to switch to the "phantom" assembly to change the configuration of the configured assembly instance.
The above issues would be non-issues if OS had better part selection methods for hiding parts in a drawing view, or allowed selection of configured assembly instances when creating drawing views.
.