Making unique copies of a part

Jonathan · January 2015

Hi all,

I have the following situation:
I want to produce several parts that generally have the same shape, but they differ in some of their parameters.
my original strategy was to make one of them, copy it, modify the original and repeat until all parts are made. This does not work because the copies change their characteristics together with the original...

My question:
Is there a way to make a part-copy unique and independent from the source, so I can change the original and have the different copied version too?
OR,
maybe anyone can recommend an altogether better approach to this problem?

Thanks,

Jonathan.

Ben_ · January 2015

Jonathan,

Are you working in an assembly? Or in a part studio?
If in an assembly I copy the part studio (copy the tab not copy in the assembly) and then use the unique part from the second studio. Will that work for your issue?
If in a part studio when you copy a body the new resulting body is unique and should not change the parent or child. (FYI this can be used as a augmented version of the above and not have to create two part studios)

Ben_ · January 2015

https://cad.onshape.com/help/#copypart.htm

Jonathan · January 2015

Hi Ben, thank you.

I work in the part studio, although the tab copy option will work for me.

About the 'copy body' in part studio:
1. I guess now it changed to Transform --> copy in place ?
2. When I do it (copy in place), and then make changes to the sketch that created the original part, the copied part changes too. Maybe I should only make direct changes, not via the sketch, in order to make unique changes in the copies? or is there a way to make a copy of a part including its sketches?

Jonathan.

Ben_ · January 2015

Huh... Never noticed that... You could try picking and pulling faces using the move face tool maybe? I found that till is incredibly handy

Jonathan · January 2015

I could do that, but would much prefer changing parameters in a sketch mode where things are "well defined".. Anyhow, the copy tab option will do the job, for now.

Thanks,

Jonathan.

jakeramsley · January 2015

I don't have the full context of this, but if you are working on different versions of the same part I would encourage you to try building each one on a branch. At this point you can drive all of them with the master branch and merge that into each version's branch. This won't work if you need all of these different versions in the same assembly though.

Jonathan · January 2015

Hi Jake,

Interesting idea, I didn't explore branches before. However, I would ultimately need all the parts in the same assembly so it is not relevant for this task.

Jonathan.

ilya_baran · January 2015

The other thing you could do if you wanted to copy a part non-parametrically is to copy the whole part studio by right-clicking on the part studio tab and choosing "Duplicate."

Jonathan · January 2015

Hi ibaran,

yes, Ben mentioned too this option earlier in the thread. I guess that's the way to go about it..

Thanks,

Jonathan.

billy2 · January 2015

Jonathan it's a big deal in CAD to have dependent and independent instances of a body and I don't think its clear in OS when one or the other occurs. You're going down the right path, it confuses me too.

Ben_ · January 2015

This really comes down to us getting used to a new way of modelling and understanding where things are and what they do. OS is in a situation where this is psudo new ground they are breaking. I would suggest that Sketchup has this figured out partially. You can right click on an instance and break the ties to the parent, but with sketchup there is no history of actions took so then they have the overhead of should it bring new sketch and boss instances with the new broken away child or not...

So I guess I should put in a feature request for the ability to right click a copied body in a part studio and be able to make it into a dumb solid or a new instance of the body with all features and sketches attached to the body. And the ability to define this when copying a body. (is this already in the list of things to do or work on @LouGallo‌ ?)

If you think this is a good idea I would suggest you all make this request so that it would bubble up from the bottom of the enhancement requests.

One thing I am LOVING about this testing is our ability to help shape the product. I know we actually have a say in the development of this software unlike most other packages.

billy2 · January 2015

When you go virtual in SW, you have the option for making instances independent. In space claim you could make instances independent and then go back to dependent, full circle. In space claim, instance dependency was an easy concept to get.

In SW (non-virtual), because it was file based:
-2 different files-independent,
-1 file-dependent right?

But who wants to go back to file based stuff. You need both dependent & independent instancing in CAD, but when and how it happens..... I'm not sure it's right in OS yet.

OS allows you to switch bodies between dependent & independent instancing but its tied to branching & merge which isn't as obvious to understand. That's why Jake is offering up the branch concept as a solution to this problem. But because you can't bring it into an assembly, well this is useless, strike 1. Not to mention the fact that part studio's don't offer instancing which is what I want, strike 2.

Ben is right about this being an issue on learning how OS handles this. I figured it all out a couple of months ago, but today I can't tell you how it works, I forgot. You should listen to Ben not me.

Ben_ · January 2015

@bill‌
Ummmm ok, well I am going to go and try the branching method to see if that works out. I am trying two wrap my brain around if that will work or not.
And listening to me can be a slippery slope

Careful when you do...

Ben_ · January 2015

Ok, so you cannot choose the version or branch instance of a part in the assembly (that I can find) so we are back to multiple tabs. I haven't played with merging branches to see if that would affect anything but at that point it turns a Onshape document into a nighmarish puzzle that one would have to unravel. I think that the ability to choose the branch instance of a part studio could be a slippery slope and add too much of a 'psychic toll' to a individual and likely cause more problems than it is worth. As much as I do not like adding more tabs I think that is the way to go on this.

Now we have to deal with the tab management issue

Im going for a break cause my mind hurts from thinking about his...

kevin_quigley · January 2015

Excellent example of why OnShape needs configurations. Quickly.

brucebartlett · January 2015

I think the assemblies will need configurations. Not sure about the part studio I find I just keep building multiple parts and use the hide show. Love way the assembly list works when adding parts/assemblies to an assembly and think configurations in the part studio would screw with this simplicity. A switch in the transform to break reference may work to solve this issue and reduce tabs. I have made the mistake of building separate part studios when parts could be structured in the one. Just waiting for drawings to see how they work this will be integral to configuration and display states.

billy2 · January 2015

So I found my notes on dependent/independent instances:

-duplicating a part studio creates an independent instance of the part studio
-copying a part studio inside an assembly creates a dependent instance of the part studio

I don't know if things have changed, but this was the behavior a couple of months ago.

ProApe · November 12

Ten years later, I find myself in the same situation; I have drawn the frame for a bed and initially the long and short sides were supposed to be identical.
But then there was a change and the footboard is now supposed to be lower than the headboard.
In the very basic SketchUp, it's very easy to ‘separate’ the two parts: right-click on them and select Make unique from the context menu, and you have two different parts.
Is there something this practical in Onshape now?

S1mon · November 12

If it's a few dimensions that change, configurations might make sense. If you don't want to have any common features between the two different parts, you might consider branching or copying the part studio. Another possibility is to derive one part into another part studio and make the changes for the second part in the second studio.

It all really depends on how you want to manage change, differences and commonalities going forward.

Derek_Van_Allen_BD · November 13

Personally I tend to commit the sin of just drawing my parts all together in a single part studio, especially for something like a bed frame where I would probably use Frame features to draw my parts and get a cut list at the end to use as my guide for unique parts instead of the assembly BOM which is gonna tell me I have 30 unique 1 of 1 frame members even if they're actually duplicates. Drawing parts with this approach saves you the headache of needing to juggle contexts and lets you draw way faster with the minor downside of increasing rebuild time and a goofy BOM.

I could probably extend my Query Variable+ feature for finding matching bodies into an automatic part de-duplication tool if I thought about it hard enough but that might require me dipping into the API to really figure out at the assembly level. @MichaelPascoe does Assembly Imposters have a way to query duped parts in a studio and substitute them in an assembly with their selected seed?

ProApe · November 13

Isn't it possible to do it in a simpler way instead of the complicated one that seems currently only practicable in Onshape, as in the much less powerful Sketchup I mentioned?
I am somewhat disappointed that after such a long period of 10 years, no simpler solution has been developed!

I finally started again from scratch and drew and extracted a new part.

MichaelPascoe · November 13

@Derek_Van_Allen_BD If I understand what your asking, then yes, that is what we made it for.

See the 🧰CADSharp Toolbox app for more info about 🕵️Assembly Imposters app and feature combo. It lets you dump an entire part studio into the assembly and it de-duplicates the parts. It does require you to tag the parts within the part studio beforehand. But this is easy if you use custom features built for it.

There are currently two features that are set up for it: Assembly Imposters feature, and the Routing Curve+ feature. These are simply examples but you could use them and extend the functionality to any custom feature then use the Assembly Imposters sub app with them. The features mark the part studio parts as hide from bom and not revision managed, this way your original part reference is what is being used in the assembly.

You can tag the part studio part with the original part URL using the imposters feature, for example a bunch of pvc elbows in a part studio pipe run, then when the entire part studio (All pipes from that pipe rout) is dumped into the assembly, you can run the imposter app and it will de-duplicate all parts that have been marked as "imposters", giving you a clean BOM with accurate qty's for each duplicate part.

.

MDesign · November 13

I think what they are asking for can only be accomplished by copying a part studio and deleting all the irrelevant part features and then making the modifications needed. If it was its own part studio you'd do the same thing except for the deleting of irrelevant bits. in the multipart studio chances are high on needing to redefine a bunch of stuff depending on what gets deleted or modified. or you could leave all of it alone and modify what you need and just delete the parts at the end of the tree you don't want in the studio. Depends on how clean you want things to be. The answer is no there is not an "easy" way. Sketchup is less logical than Onshape… so it makes sense that it would be "easier".

ProApe · November 13

In any case, it's quite complicated in Onshape, and I think the simplest solution is the one I used: redesign the part.

S1mon · November 13

What's complicated about right-clicking on a part studio tab and selecting duplicate?

Making unique copies of a part

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