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How to reference a new part to assembly features?
Auke_Smit_SIL
Member Posts: 20 PRO
or: Is there a way to make a part studio from an assembly? or to edit an assembly as if it is a part?
Background: I need to design a housing around a PCB. The PCB design with all components I got from an Altium Designer export to a solidworks file.
Altium does this "thing" where they put each part into an assembly, and all assemblies in 1 big assembly. When importing the file into onshape I get a top level assembly with a lot of assemblies of component parts, which I cannot edit directly.
How I work: I like to build my housing around the PCB and make some references to the holes and parts of the pcb. Which can be done easily with a part studio, but I am not sure how to do this inside a top level assembly.
I will also check if I can use onshape with altium directly, but I could not find an app for that.
Thanks for the help.
Background: I need to design a housing around a PCB. The PCB design with all components I got from an Altium Designer export to a solidworks file.
Altium does this "thing" where they put each part into an assembly, and all assemblies in 1 big assembly. When importing the file into onshape I get a top level assembly with a lot of assemblies of component parts, which I cannot edit directly.
How I work: I like to build my housing around the PCB and make some references to the holes and parts of the pcb. Which can be done easily with a part studio, but I am not sure how to do this inside a top level assembly.
- Any ideas on how to make part references inside an assembly?
- or on how to make a part studio out of a top level assembly, so I can continue my work inside this part?
I will also check if I can use onshape with altium directly, but I could not find an app for that.
Thanks for the help.
0
Answers
Also I found to edit in context, I think this will help in my case. But for the pcb it is not ideal, since each part in that top level assembly will be showed while editing. So I have to hide all parts except of the part I want to edit. I am still new to onshape, so I am not sure why this happens. seems like there is 1 big part studio somewhere with all parts on the same spot. would be nice to have the option to only edit that specific part instead of the whole part studio. or to have the parts inside the part studio in the same relative position as the assembly..
Here are a couple of videos showing the workflow -
https://www.onshape.com/videos/design-in-context
https://www.onshape.com/videos/designing-linkages-in-context
For you i would say the steps would be;
This is a very brief overview - the training videos and live training classes are best way to master these advanced capabilities.
Have fun!
I will try to flatten on import.
The group function was also usefull
Derived parts I have to still check,
edit in context works, but updating is not automatic or quick. Would be nice if there is an option to update automatic for the quick and dirty design sessions.
Would be nice to be able to make a part studio based on a assembly, with the relative position saved. It will make the workflow more flexible.
Thanks for your comment, I just saw it. And I will definitely check out the videos. I found edit in context as well. --> can the updating go automatic?
For me it helped to import as part studio (flatten) and than continue working on it. --> as said, it would be nice to be able to flatten later on.
Do you know if I can organize my parts and surfaces inside the part studio? Now I have 214 parts and 767 surfaces... Excluding the parts for the housing which I want to be able to find when working with them.
would be nice if I can put the pcb parts in a folder or "group" to be able to hide them as a group. and focus on the housing parts.
for now I think to create a new part studio, add both to an assembly, and edit my parts through edit in context.
Or maybe I will just export an stl and import the shape to have just 1 part..
The other piece of functionality that is going to help you is the 'hide other parts' (its on the RMB menu) - this will hide all the PCB parts other than the part you were hovering over when you invoked the hide. When you want to see them again, RMB 'show all parts'. I think this will help you a lot
I am using flatten import now and this works great.But I think the normal import could be improved. Because flatten import would not be necessary if the part studio would show my parts the same way as the assembly or as if I had flattened my import (so with relative position to eachother intact). Then when I use edit in context all parts will keep their position and not make a mess. Because now with a normal import it adds an assembly, which shows everything correct, and 1 part studio with a big mess of parts (200+ components).
If that is not possible than it would be nice if onshape only shows the selected part when I use edit in context. (except for all parts inside the assembly which should still be semi visible of course). This way I do not have to select that component again to use "hide all other parts".
So maybe this is not logical for other use cases, but definitely for imported stp files.