Learning Design Intent: What is a good way to achieve mirroring in assemblies?

florian_ford

I have my coffee table design I use to learn OnShape. It has two different types of structures that are doubled in the assembly of the real thing:
 - 1 x U-Shape legs construct made by 3 welded square tubes and two welded brackets 
 - 1 x Bridge square tube that has holes the two brackets will fasten to

These two constructs are doubled (mirrored) on the other side and a Cover Board comes over them. The four brackets fasten to the board via screws.
Link to my design: https://goo.gl/MLhEUI

First I have created all parts, all mirrors, etc in a part studio but then I wanted to mate them like they are in real life so I imported all in an assembly. But here comes the dilemma. It took some effort to mate all welded parts and I have grouped them together in hopes that I can somehow mirror the U-Shape legs structure and not have to mate again the mirrored parts that I already have from the parts studio.

My question is: how would the workflow go from a design intent pov? I shouldn't have to mate all parts that go together in an assembly. What if there are 100 such parts?

Thank you.

florian_ford

Ok, it seems to motivate me to post a question in here and then search for the answer myself:) ... So in my case all the parts are in such a way symmetrical that mirroring is not necessarily needed but there might be the case that real mirroring is needed and just rotating is not enough. For that particular situation the question remains.

So I could just:
 - create an assembly from the parts that are welded together and mate them as they should be
 - create another assembly and importing this assembly and the parts that didn't need a separate assembly, the number of times they were needed in the final assembly (2 in my case)
 - mate all these and where needed rotate using the Triad or using the Mate flip and reorient buttons

Now my assembly is complete and I am quite happy with it ... I just wonder if there was a simpler way to achieve this, maybe using sub-assemblies so I don't have to create another assembly and increase the number of tabs unnecessarily.

_Ðave_

Not sure I understand all the issues you present but if you create the entire assembly in a part studio why do you need to have an assembly. If you need an assembly why not just insert  the entire part studio and group it?

florian_ford

I am not creating the entire assembly in the part studio, just the entities that make up the assembly. In my table example, I have one U-shape part that makes two legs of the table and one bridge tube connecting the two U-shape parts.

Now in the assembly I will insert twice the U-shape and twice the bridge tube so I can have the 4 legs in a sturdy frame.

In my case I am able yo just insert the U-shape twice and rotate it so the brackets face each other, so a mirroring action in the assembly tab is not necessary but there might be other cases where a simple rotate will not suffice, and mirroring a sub-assembly or an assembly group would be necessary and logical.

_Ðave_

I guess my point is that wouldn't it be easy to create, copy,  mirror etc. all the parts in a part studio and not mess with an assembly at all.

florian_ford

Hmmm, something's lost in translation. My point is that I want to use the Part Studio only for the minimum amount of parts and use the Assembly for everything else.

Everything else means:
 - having multiple instances of the Parts created in the Part Studio
 - being able to mirror an instance of a Part or a whole sub-assembly (This feature I am looking for)

As far as I understand it a Part Studio is just that,  A REPOSITORY OF PARTS. Their placement within the Part Studio is free floating, even if they seem in the right place. Grab one and move it around... how are you going to put it back in the exact position if you are not using mates?

I want the Mirror functionality in the Assembly because I don't want to create mirrors in the Part Studio and then re-do the mating for all these mirrored instances. I would create a mated sub-assembly and then import it in another assembly and mirror it. It would be just another "special" case of the "Copy/Paste" option that is already available. It would be much less work, something OS brags about in all videos.

Lucas_Kuhns

_Ðave_ said:

I guess my point is that wouldn't it be easy to create, copy,  mirror etc. all the parts in a part studio and not mess with an assembly at all.

The reason to use an Assembly is that you can then utilize the BOM. Mirroring in the Part Studio treats the "mirrors" as new parts even though they are really the exact same thing.

You can vote on the improvement request here: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/5763/mirror-feature-for-assembly-workflow/p1