Mates breaking?

Hi all,

I'm continuing my evaluation of SW2006 while weighing the benefits of
moving from Alibre Pro...

I've had some issues with mates breaking down in assemblies. This has
manifested itself in two ways:

1. The mates show up in red in the tree view.

or

2. The mates appear fine in the tree view, but have visually ripped
apart some subassemblies (I have double-checked that the subassemblies
are being solved as rigid, not flexible).

In either case, typically just saving the file, closing it, and
reopening it will correct the problem. Is there a 'deep regen' command
somewhere that will correct the mates? The regen but (stop light icon)
doesn't seem always fix these regeneration issues, where closing and
re-opening will.

Thanks!

-Gareth Conner

 

Just opinion:

1. If I was evaluating moving from one program to another, I would
pick the seasoned production version, not a near Beta like SWks 2006
where one can expect glitches for another few SP releases at least. (I
use SWks 2005 SP4.1).

2. Some subtleties in mates can cause problems and Matt Lombard's web
site has notes on these things that go wrong, and this news group has
gone over some of the ways in the past.

Matt's site has links to lots of other SWks user's web sites, too.

http://www.dezignstuff.com/

Bo

 

Thanks for the link Bo, I will check it out.

With regards to using SW2005 for production use, I certainly agree.
I'll get a hold of the VAR and see if I can evaluate the previous
release. In all honesty, I wasn't aware how fresh SW2006 was until
receiving it in the mail and reading up on some of these forums.

Thanks again for the advice.

-Gareth Conner

 

Gareth

Try hitting 'Ctrl + Q' This will force a rebuild of everything whether it
needs it or not.

Rich

 

If a mate shows up in Red there is a mate diagnostic tool that will
help you find out why. In SW you have to be very careful not to
overconstrain an assembly.

I'm not clear on what you mean by mates in a top level assembly ripping
apart a lower level assembly.

The rigid/flexible switch has to do with subassemblies that are
underconstrained so that they can move like a mechanism. In the past
SW required a subassembly to have a separate configuration for each
instance of flexible in the top level assembly. In 2005 that
requirement went away.

CTRL-Q does a forced rebuild. It regenerates the feature tree from top
to bottom.

Someone suggested trying an earlier version of SW. That will not likely
happen since once SW releases a new version the old one becomes
unavailable. Even if SW2005 SP3 were more stable they wouldn't sell it
to you.

 

Thanks for the reply,

I did find the mate diagnostic tool, but was unable to glean anything
helpful.

I mentioned the rigid/flexible switch just because I am using some
linkages in the assembly that require the sub's to be sovled as
flexible (to similate the mechanism motion). I figured that if I
mistakenly switch one of the sub's to flexible, and the sub had been
underconstrained, that the mates in the assembly could move parts in
the sub. However, I did confirm that the offending parts that moved
were located in a rigid assembly.

I'm sure this is a case of operator error, as I've only been getting my
hands dirty for a couple of days. The bit that threw me was that just
closing and re-opening the file made the issues disappear. Initially I
had been quite cavalier about declining the VAR trainging sessions (7
days @ $1800), but perhaps that was foolish. Without a manual, and
only outdated 3rd party books, I sense that I'm fumbling around more
than I should.

I've discovered you're correct about obtaining older SW versions. This
is perhaps a shame, yet I'm becoming more convinced that the issues I'm
having are of my own doing I have found many good things in SW, but
there is a lot left to uncover!

Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

Best regards,
Gareth Conner

 

You might also look into your local technical schools. Although you
would be working with SW at least 6 months behind current release, the
pace would allow you to absorb much more than VAR training. I don't
know where you are located, but consider a large user group meeting or
SW World for further training.

 

This looks like what CTRL-Q is supposed to do. Are you saying that
sometimes it will work when CTRL-Q will not?

WT

 

I'm not sure what the difference is, but ForceRebuild3(False) is distinctly
different from Ctrl-Q. ForceRebuild3 updates incorrectly parts with
equations in Linear Patterns. I notice this most often in bolt patterns,
where the linear pattern has an equation for the number of instances.
ForceRebuild apparently evaluates the equations with the default
configuration values. The only recourse is to open the part, rebuild the
part with Ctrl-B, and then return to the assembly. This (thankfully) fixes
all configurations, but the part won't update correctly in place after
ForceRebuild. Ctrl-Q apparently leaves the bolt pattern unmolested, or it
evaluates the equation correctly.

 

Dale,
Thanks a bunch! I'll give this a try next time the problem occurs.
Ctrl-Q does not seem to go as deep as closing and opening a file, this
macro should save some time!

Thanks again,
Gareth

 

That makes it sound like it's not a case of operator error. Mates are not
one of the more robust areas in SW.

It's a little late to be giving you this advice, but I am very fond of using
the training as an evaluation tool. SW is pretty easy to pick up, at least
as far as the basics go, but there are bound to be areas you miss in your
self-training.

A good VAR will set you up with earlier versions if you want them. Ours did.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"