Make Assembly Part Unique

I am coming from a background in SDRC I-Deas and with that software if
you had two instances of part X and you decided you needed to make one
of the 2 X parts a different part, you use a command called "Make
Unique". You would then give the part a new name, say Y, and then
instead of having 2 X parts you would have a part X and an identical
part Y. You could then open part Y and make the chages you needed to.
Doing a Save as Copy isn't really what I want because I would then have
to remove one instance of part X and then bring in part Y and redo the
constraints, that is exactly what I am trying to avoid.

Chris W

 

I am coming from a background in SDRC I-Deas and with that software if

Go ahead and do a Save As Copy.
Now you have 2 parts, X and Y
Your assembly still has 2 X.
Then, in your assembly, do a replace on one of the X parts to replace it
with Y.
All constraints will carry over to the new Y.
Now you can make your changes to Y.

 

Sounds like we should make an ER for 'replace with copy'.

Say you have several X parts in the assembly.
You right-click on one of the X parts via the window or feature manager.
Click 'replace with copy' in the menu.
Save as dialog pops up with 'save as copy' checked.
you save the part as Y
It replaces that instance of X automatically with Y, mates intact.

Only issues I can think of are:
If you unchecked 'save as copy' when the save as dialog popped up should it
replace all instances?
Should the option to uncheck 'save as copy' even be available since you can
replace all instances via opening the part and by doing a 'save as' anyway?
Maybe this would eliminate having to open the part to save it as a new name
to replace all instances. You would simply uncheck 'save as copy', it would
then prompt you "Unchecking 'save as copy' will replace all instances with
the newly saved part name" (or something like that).

What do you all think? (I know, I know.. no more "new features" till they
get the existing ones fixed you hypocrite).

 

This could be a useful feature. I like it.

Yes. I would use this quite often since we use existing assemblies as
the base for new but slightly different versions all the time. I like
the idea of creating the new part without having to open the old one first.

Dave H

 

Sounds like a challenge to me.
Corey takes out his gloves
slaps Arlin Jeff and Dave on each cheek
and commences with no time frame

Corey