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move multipart or subassemblies on assemblies as a whole unit without re-mating
david_gomez008
Member Posts: 6 ✭
I been working with imported multibody parts from solidworks and when I bring the sub assemblies inside an assembly or a multi-body part studio in to an assembly I have to move and mate all the parts independently again. Is there a way not to do that and move the multibody or subassemblies as single body?
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NeilCooke
Moderator, Onshape Employees Posts: 5,377 
Hi David, please use the group command in assemblies.Senior Director, Technical Services, EMEAI5
Answers
I have a inserted a multi-body part into an assembly. I have fixed this first "Group" of sub-parts and mated a second Group to the fixed Group. (can't see any indication that this second group is in fact fully mated). However the next (3rd) weldment I insert keeps moving the supposedly fully mated 2nd group when I try to mate to it. How do I stop this?
I tend to have a 'fixed' group, then I group parts that stay together when they move.
Lets say I have 4 things that move in an assy, 1 is a fixed group and the others are grouped with mate connectors controlling the position of the groups.
Typically things that move are made up of many parts. I'm constantly adding to groups when designing new parts, but the assy stays with the 4 things that move & what I've grouped. The groups get bigger in size as my design evolves.
Why?
Your alternative is to fasten all the parts together to form a thing. These fasten mate connectors holding your parts together clutter things up and it makes the assy harder to understand. Look at a SW assy.
I'd rather see the 3 mate connectors holding the groups together and leave the fastened mate connectors out of the picture leaving the true mate connectors that controls the assy's motion.
It's just house keeping and cleans things up. Coming from SW where everything is mated to everything else, well, grouping is much better.
Why group vs. assemble?
It's faster.
Assemblies
You can use assemblies, which I do, but you'll have to group inside the assembly. I tend to use assemblies when I don't want the feature list polluted with all the part names.
I do build a lot a working assemblies and import into my top level assembly. This way I can keep things that move organized so I'm not defining everything in the top.
It does build-up nicely.
Thoughts
This ain't SolidWorks and there's more to the assemblies than in previous modelers. There doesn't appear to be much discussion on this subject on this forum and maybe there should be. Currently I'm working on moving my assemblies into their own documents which means they're under version control. With this your layouts/assemblies can begin to grow and get large.