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Part Inheritance/Parent and Child Parts?
mr_ru
Member Posts: 2 ✭✭
Hi all,
I have a need to have an inheritance based part designing method.
Here is my situation
I have a project that has a number of different parts that depend on some base attributes. For example, I have a tolerance and a part length defined in one place, but I'd like to use those variables across different parts.
The parts I am designing have many features, and I'd like to try and separate them from each other as much as possible. However, some parts are easier to design when having reference to another. So I try to make use of derive to get those parts. However, this ends up causing daisy chaining, as I end up deriving parts that derive from other parts. This reduces performance, which I'm trying to avoid. (source: )
I also have been trying to understand how best to use branching. I try to branch when I'm making a different version of some base part that needs to edit features. However I'm still learning.
My ultimate goal is to make a change in one place, and have my design automatically update all parts to accommodate this change, while preserving performance
I don't feel that I fully understand how I can best separate my designs to accommodate this goal. Normally, in a programming language, I could do almost endless chaining by using imports. If I need attributes from different concreate classes, I could pass the concrete class to another to access it's attributes. It seems that Onshape struggles with this, in the way that I understand how it can be done currently.
I'm looking for a new design methodology, and I'd appreciate any resources sent my way on how to best structure my designs to accomplish this.
I have some ideas, like defining more specific sketches from a single base part studio that help define all the ways that parts need to connect with each other. Testing this could be difficult for me though, as restructuring my studios is complicated. I'd love to be able to copy features, like I would with methods in code, but Onshape doesn't seem to accommodate this.
I think I could achieve this with merging, but then when I make a new edit to a base part, I'll need to merge that change to each branch, and it ends up causing more features in each part. I tend to find that the less features I have, the better performance I get. This merging also takes a lot of time and is tedious. I'd prefer to not do lots of merging every time I make a small change to a base dimension of something. So I'm looking for a better solution.
I'm also not sure when I should create a new document or just make a new part studio. Maybe I should be branching to create different parts from a branch that has blank part studios, but this doesn't make sense to me logically.
I could do what I used to do, and design all parts in the same studio, but this just ends up causing performance issues.
Does anyone have any advice about how I can structure my design documents?
If someone has done this before, and could provide an example, I'd be very thankful for it.
Comments
The main ways to do achieve this would be to use variables from a variable studio for any dimensions/clearances, values shared across your document (or others).
The next thing to is to create a single part studio with reference geometry (sketches/whatever) that you derive into other part studios as needed.
The chained derives can be a valid option, you can get around the performance issue by referencing a version of the "parent" in your derive feature. It won't update live anymore so you have to create a new version and update manually to get the update.
You could have a "parent" part studio in a different document that you version every time you make a change to it and derive that in all the part studios you need it in, as long as you break the chain with a version at the last level it should solve the performance issues.
Branching isn't the best way to create different versions of a part. Configurations might be useful if you have similar enough parts.
Check out the "top down design" course in the learning center if you haven't already, you'll pick up some tips on how to best achieve some of this.
did you check this video of @GregBrown on top down design?
someone also recreated this featurescript already.
As long as the references are one directional and minimal, things should be OK in terms of speed. Just make sure you don't refer back and forth too much.
new part studio vs new document is a trade-off in version control mostly.
new document allows version control, but requires manual update commands, so its not instantly updating.
branching is useful for alternative solutions for the same part, not ideal for new parts…
@jelte_steur814, thanks so much for your feedback! I'll review these videos and concepts and get post here if I have any questions