Assemblies & Mate Connectors

Ben_Misegades

I'll go ahead and say it, I'm still not in love with Mate Connectors. I think the biggest issue I have is that they seem to always depend on geometry, which is fine, until you want to change that geometry, particularly, if you delete geometry that was used to create said mate connector. That's why I'm still hugely in favor of allowing part studio planes to be used in assemblies.

On a somewhat different topic pertaining to assemblies, I'm also not a fan of how part studios or their components are added to an assembly. Inserting a part studio as a whole into an assembly essentially just dumps a quantity of loose parts/bodies into my assembly that just so happen to be oriented in the same direction, but have no relation to each other at. The parts are all individual items in the assembly tree, and they all can be moved independently of one another. "Grouping" them at least solves the issue of them sticking together, but there is no grouping in the assembly tree, which can get massive very very quickly if you start inserting multiple part studios.

I really wish that there was an option upon inserting items into an assembly that would allow me to insert an entire part studio such that it is treated more like a subassembly. All of the parts are in a group such that they cannot move independently of one another, and the part studio is a single "line item" in the assembly tree. Additionally, allowing the creation and destruction of these part studio groups in the assembly tree would be highly useful.

Furthermore, if inserted as a group, I would also very much like for part studios inserted into an assembly to fully update. Currently, alterations to existing parts in a part studio will update in the assembly, but the addition of new parts in part studios will not show up in the assembly (at least, I don't believe they do?)

3dcad

I agree 100%.

As workaround I tend to add part studio into empty assembly and use that assembly as subassy for main. That is an extra step but it makes things easier as you can box select all and add group so it's pretty fast. When adding parts to studio, all you need to do is add those new parts into subassy in their default position and include them into existing group.
If position is changed in part studio, I usually delete the part and add it again to sub-assy.

A big +1 for 'live part studio' insert which creates hidden mates automatically so that any dimension changes or added parts would update into assembly real time.

ps. You can create mate connector(s) in part studio to act as default plane(s) in assembly.

john_mcclary

Yea, mate connectors took a while to get used to, but the more I used them the more I love them.

Until I add or update parts in a studio

Your right adding/updating parts mated in a studio, isn't as streamlined as I is in traditional cad.
But I guess It's a give and take, I save sooooo much time in the initial assembly creation, that I haven't lost too much time re-doing it later.
Unfortunately it destroys assembly drawings completely...

This all needs a good sit down and discuss the workflow of updates across studio/assembly/drawing

I still wish assemblies would show which parts are under constrained, It's impossible to tell if a part is not mated, unless you touch each one, and move it in the degree of freedom that isn't locked.

brucebartlett

For me, at some points, I absolutely love mate connectors for the speed at which mates can be added and the higher level mates which reduce overall complexity. But I also find it difficult to mate some parts and feel uncomfortable with some of the selections, especially when trying to get parts symmetrical to each other, I hate having to add the extra between mate connector when I should be able to just select 2 faces and a centre plane. I also don't like selecting of edges of radi and struggle with midpoints on faces.

I really think symmetric mate may have a place to avoid some of these concerns and could also work with a mirror components feature down the track.

I have mixed thoughts about inserting part studios into assemblies. I thinking it may be good to be able to insert a live part studio into an assembly which would be naturally grouped (locked in position to each other), have any updates show up live and also if the part studio had part instancing the intermediate assembly for grouping and BOM's could be done away with. However, I have got used to the current workflow, I will model up to 200 in a part studio independent of any structure but base purely on geometry links then use the assemblies to build the Product/Motion/BOM structure. With the current form of in-context I now finding I have parts for a weld spanning across multiple parts that then need to be group back together. 

brucebartlett

john_mcclary said:

I still wish assemblies would show which parts are under constrained, It's impossible to tell if a part is not mated, unless you touch each one, and move it in the degree of freedom that isn't locked.

+1 for this. Not sure if it's an improvement request but should be, would be high on my list of improvements and sure I have asked for this numerous times.

john_mcclary

brucebartlett said:

john_mcclary said:

I still wish assemblies would show which parts are under constrained, It's impossible to tell if a part is not mated, unless you touch each one, and move it in the degree of freedom that isn't locked.

+1 for this. Not sure if it's an improvement request but should be, would be high on my list of improvements and sure I have asked for this numerous times.

Yea I keep procrastinating making it, but here lets just get it done

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/6308/show-under-defined-parts-in-assembly/p1?new=1