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Bug? How to drive sub assembly configuration variables (string)?
MichaelPascoe
Member Posts: 2,202 PRO
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From within a main assembly, I'm not able to drive sub-assembly or part studio configuration variables (string) with my main assembly configuration variables.
Is this a bug or has it just not been implemented yet?
It appears to work with length values but string / text values are unconfigurable.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/1cc2eb3fe42d26db3c42c251/w/27d288b63105d3f2c08ab11d/e/9b5d22d3f37a09436f1…
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Best Answer
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ilya_baran
Onshape Employees, Developers, HDM Posts: 1,230 
Yeah, we haven't implemented "convert to expression" for string parameters in assemblies yet. I am curious, do you have a real-world use case for this?
Ilya Baran \ VP, Architecture and FeatureScript \ Onshape Inc0
Answers
Yeah, we haven't implemented "convert to expression" for string parameters in assemblies yet. I am curious, do you have a real-world use case for this?
Yes, we have a client that has a pretty large project with up to 4 levels of sub assemblies. I wanted to let them choose color themes for the different types of parts (Sheet metal, frames, accent 1, accent 2, main, etc... ) in the top level assembly.
I can think of a number of useful cases for this:
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Same exact real world use case here but for colorway management. We have catalog components that clients are allowed to specify custom paint colors for and creating a new explicit table entry and SKU in a configuration window for every possible pantone paint color is not realistic nor what I would consider to be correct document control. We have a part studio level configuration variable driving a hex color code script which partially covers this use case but it does not propagate up the assembly levels. Numeric parameters pass correctly but this is a case where I need the text expression to be able to drive hex values from 0-F
Global assembly level control over text embossing is another valuable use case for us as well.
Thank you @MichaelPascoe and @Derek_Van_Allen_BD — this is helpful.