importing an assembly and Parts

mark_biasotti

I have a question:  If I want to import a SW assembly Naturally, I must import the parts and the SW assembly. 1) does OS even recognize a SW assembly file with or without it's associated parts?  2) with a large imported assembly, how does one organize it's many parts into one "location"? and 3) associate it with the imported assembly?  OS allows you to import a SW assembly, but once it is imported/uploaded, and you try to open it, nothing happens - probably because none of it's parts were uploaded with it.  So to summarize, what is the best workflow for importing a SW assembly and having all the imported parts and assembly logically organized?

Mark

Addition:  So I have discover from Joe D. that import of SW assemblies is not yet support and that we should rather import it using Parasolid. So if this does work (importing parasolid assembly) my question still stands; how does one logically and conveniently organize an assembly of parts?  I guess this is actually a much broader question and if there is a tutorial of this I would appreciate watching it and learning. It is, I would imagine, an important topic and would love to see a webinar on "how to transition from file-base MCAD to Onshape file management?"  

caradon

For SW assies I've found saving to Parasolid (x_t), importing into OS and then translating to native OS to be the most reliable route.
As far as I know, OS can only translate SW parts, not assies.

STEP will also work, but for SW: Parasolid > STEP.
Saving your SW assy to Parasolid should be very fast.

Dries

lougallo

@mbiasotti As you know a SW assembly is nothing more than a container file wrt parts.  We are working on supporting a Pack and Go zip to ensure we have the necessary parts are included.  In order to read that dependency list we would nee to be using the document api from SW to run locally which requires some local install. We are looking at more streamlined ways to get dependent files but at this point exporting something like @Dries has suggested.

brucebartlett

I have done a few parts but still have not worked out the best system. I have found parasolid to works ok for SW Assemblies, biggest draw back is getting on a machine with solidworks to do the export, I don't always have solidworks available but have ready access to the files so find  most of the time I just load the SW parts. You can flatten a parasolid assy to a OS parts studio which keeps all parts in their assembled location (I prefer this if i have to make changes) or when translating to an OS assembly you also get a part studio with all the parts back at their origin and the parts have their original name which is good. It would be nice if you had the option when translating the parasolid assembly to have the parts in the parts studio positioned in their original position. I did try deleting the translated part studio tab with parts at the origin and reinserting a newly translated tab with parts in position and having the same names to see if the translated assembly would find the the parts but with no luck, OS would need to have a replace tab and pick referenced parts for this to work.   

A drawback with translating to OS part studios rather than an OS assembly is part studio's don't support multiple part instances so the same part comes up as a different part in the part studio.

It will be nice to getting referencing for parts and assemblies across multiple OS workspaces, I don't want to have to translated common parts numerous times into different Onshape doc's.

It would also be nice to get the parts meta properties from solidworks, eg no retyping or cut and paste.
 

kevin_quigley

Call me an idiot here, but as we use OnShape on a far away server that runs the app, and parasolid, why can't you run centralised versions of SolidWorks, Creo etc and use them to automatically load native packaged files uploaded to the server and link into OnShape? 

lougallo

@KevinQuigley‌ It is not about running centralized versions of actual tools, it is about a loading mechanism.  We can assemble them when all the files exist but they need to be part of the uploader, which is a client side app.  We are looking at ways to make getting the right data up there for complete translation.  Until then and export is our method for now.

joe_dunne

Mark there is a webinar on this topic

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/245/working-with-imported-data-webinar-recording#latest

Let me know if this helps

We are hesitant to invest too much time or resources a current behavior that is going to away soon.  We will directly handle SW assemblies. 

We are hyper aware that there are areas we need more material and more information. So the more you let us know where you find gaps the better.  Its where we are spending quite a bit of resources.  And will continue to do so.

Joe

mark_biasotti

Thanks for the reply Joe. I Think what I really crave an answer to is how cloud-based, document tagging, non-folder approach OS really is the future and better than my windows-based file/folder approach that millions know and works well for. I'm not arguing against  cloud but more - how do I manage a large database of parts, subassembles and assemblies in OS. I'll really not trying to be facetious here - just really wanting  to understand... This is something I'd like to see an entire webinar on, and frankly I'd need to be sold on this before proceeding into production with OS. All this pending until OS has their "plan" implimented and ready to show off.

mark

lougallo

@mbiasotti Document organization is something we are iterating on now.  As it stands you can search on the documents page which is not close to the complete search we will need to find what we want.  Folders/Tags is something many cloud companies have gone back and forth on due to organization, security, sharing hierarchy and other functions their users want.  Gmail and Drive both just had tagging that now can be used in both a tag and/or folders approach, Dropbox more folder based.

This is an area I am spending a lot of time on various scenarios and we know it is important to get right and get out there prior to production... Probably off topic in this discussion.

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/11/folder-in-my-documents#latest 

brucebartlett

I would love tagging, however would not be required if search included the meta-properties which would effectively be your tags.