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Comments
Hole feature was really the first MBD feature in a way.
Pretty much what I though the when it came out:
I hope I'm right about the tolerance analysis as well 😋
Being able to modify dimensions on the 3D part is very convenient because it means you don't have to go back up the construction tree to find the relevant functions.
However, I don't think it's a good idea to introduce tolerances at this level because the dimensions entered in CAD are very rarely the functional dimensions that should appear on the definition drawing. Functional dimensions result from dimension chains and a distribution of tolerance intervals that are of paramount importance in minimizing manufacturing and assembly costs.
Have I misunderstood something?
For a lot of things I've worked on, I completely agree. However for people that make very mechanical things, having the tolerances in the sketches works. There are even people that somehow think that every dimension used to create a model can (and should) be on a 2D drawing (or now MBD). That's so far from any reality that I work with.
I'm happy that MBD is happening, and it seems this is really just the MVP of this functionality. It's clear there will be a lot more development to come.
Simon Gatrall | Product Development, Engineering, Design, Onshape | Ex- IDEO, PCH, Unagi, Carbon | LinkedIn
@Derek_Van_Allen_BD You're not a heretic but a realist. I'm not sure assemblies have ever been done correctly and were originally architected to sell software, not for designing products. Spinning a 3D model and watching 4-bar linkage move was very exciting back in the day when most of us were on drafting boards, 2D CAD or 3D wireframe. In the early days, if we had stuck to a simpler definition of an assembly, we'd all be better off. It took 2 years to come up with design in an assembly which added even more stuff to an assemblies' definition, that's why people don't like it. Streamlining your assemblies might be the smart thing to do.
Most people I've seen use a spreadsheet to control purchasing. Trying to control a proper assembly and drive an accurate BOM is time consuming. Are you using an MRP system and can you drive it with your CAD model?
Do you show hardware in your part studios? How do you purchase them and keep them handy, are they considered common stock? The last company I was at wanted everything in the BOM. They had no idea the manpower required to maintain a correct hardware count in a CAD model.
Short answer is anything that needs ordered special for one particular job gets ordered for that job in an Asana project that gets tagged with the job # on receipt and stashed away with all the other custom job parts, and things like fasteners will go into the model but the BOM gets ignored because the hardware rack is all a Kanban stock refill schema where the reorders of boxes get charged to jobs when they go empty but we don't track individual hardware consumption. Save the manpower and mental energy for the big ticket items is the goal.
Derek Van Allen | Engineering Consultant | MeddlerIt appears today is Onshape F5 day! Time to lift your finger and starting pounding the F5 key like its a slot machine at a casino.😁
Twitter: @BryanLAGdesign
It's F5day the 13th at that. I should have prepped some cursed feature to publish today.
Derek Van Allen | Engineering Consultant | MeddlerOh, that would explain a lot today… Week of Friday the 13th
All kind of weird stuff happening… We imported 4 machines into our ERP system and everything was scrambled. It turns out the CSV we exported from Onshape was good, but the act of opening it in Excel changes the format of the index to be "numbers" for things like 1.10, it then proceeded to truncate the trailing zero…
So, instead of: 3.9.5 , 3.10, 3.10.1 we get:
then the importer for the ERP overwrote what was already in 1.1 with the information in what would have been 1.10…
I hate auto formatting sometimes. It feels like you spend more time reversing it than you do. Now they have to go through 1023 lines and check for this. And of course you can't delete anything that is in the ERP, so they have to go through and archive everything one at a time and solve the puzzle with clunky software…
It's no wonder so many people here left shortly after noon... Been one of those weeks. Tornadoes, Floods, Rain, Snow all at the same time. Ain't Michigan Grand...
Yeah, never "open" a CSV with Excel, it will insist on being "helpful" and wreck stuff!
Launch Excel and then "import" the CSV data so you get a chance to specify the format.
Or go in the options and disable these two so your part numbers don't get converted to numbers or dates!
Excel is notorious in scientific circles and academia for absolutely butchering critical data for research for this reason.
Derek Van Allen | Engineering Consultant | MeddlerSpreadsheets tend to be risky for critical work. I almost never use them and neither does anybody on my team. I've dealt with the aftermath too many times.
Awesome, thanks for the tip. I didn't know there was a setting
I turned off auto convert in excel, and it still does it… Opening the CSV in a text editor shows it is correct before loading.
But I don't even get the warning in excel that conversions are happening, even though that is checked on
Edit: Nevermind, it looks like double clicking the csv to open in excel ignores those options. You have to open excel, go to data, click import csv… That's annoying!
🤨That's Excel for you…
Kinda spoiled with Onshape where things behave (mostly…) predictably and consistently!
For real!
Yeah, but at least there is a work around… I presented it to the team. they aren't happy about having to import the CSV into excel rather than just double clicking it… 😓