Showing two positions of a cylinder? New to Pro-E

I am new to Pro-E, I have been using Solidworks for several years.
Here is my question, how do I show two positions of a cylinder? The
guys here where I work are doing it with simplified reps, but that
requires two copies of the cylinder rod which screws up the BOM. Is
there not a way to make a simplified rep show a part in a position
driven by a variable? Or is there another way to do this?

Thanks in advance!

 

We do this with nitrogen spring cylinders by modelling the body and
piston in the compressed positions, and add a revolved surface about
the bore axis to show the extended position. You can drive the surface
top from a variable that dimensions the top top bottom of the
cylinder.
In this way we have a visual of the stroke of the cylinder, and
because the extended top is only a surface, it doesnt interfere with
global interference checks.

 

Not sure exactly what you want to do or show, but I'd try using a family
table. Create an instance for the 2nd position. That way the BOM won't count
2 of the same parts. Separate views for each position should work fine. If
you're trying to show both positions in one view... not sure. I'd have to
try it out.

 

Couple more possibilites:
1. Create an explode state: these can be shown in drawings as a view state. The
explode state would capture the extended cylinder position. No additional models
needed. It is just another view of your original assembly.
2. Assemble your model with "connections", not 6dof fixed (the usual condition of
an assembled component). A "pin" connection allows planar movement of piston along
axis of cylinder/shaft. Once constrained in this way, you can take snapshots that
can be made available to drawing views.

These may require additional modules of Pro/e; depends what you got already. If
details needed, they can be provided.

 

Yet another: drive the piston with a dimension controlled by a family
table.

 

Sure could. Mechanism Design Extension does offer some really nice
functionality for simulating a cylinder's motion. In fact, there's actually
a Connection constraint called Cylinder. This allows both translation and
rotation about the cylinder's centerline axis. A Slider connection only
allows translation along the cylinder's centerline axis. Slider works just
fine if you don't need any rotation. And it can be sort of fun to animate
these types of mechanisms using Pro/E's Animation module.

Ron M.

 

And we didn't even get into the functionality of design animation
('Applications>Design Animation') which combines some of the functionality of
mechanism design with that of creating exploded views. All of which can be
captured in snapshots and mpegs. What is that ~ five different approaches!?! The
biggest problem in moving from SolidWorks to Pro/e may be focusing on JUST one. It
was no problem with SW; there was only one.[/QUOTE]

 

Thanks for the options. I will have to give some of those a shot and
let you know how it worked out.