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btimmerman1-Visitor
1-Visitor
May 2, 2016
Solved

Assembly STEP import - position/placement of items

  • May 2, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 12562 views

Hi all!

I'm trying to figure out how Creo knows the position (or placement/location) of items within an imported STEP assembly.

After importing the step you obviously are left with an assembly where all the single parts and sub-asm. are in the right spot, but how is that location determined and stored? When deleting the Import Feature Id ## of a imported part, the complete geometry is deleted. Do the same in an assembly and all parts are still there .. in the right place.

And then the catch: When I replace one of the single parts with a non-imported part (native Creo from my Workspace) it still is valid and not packaged. While adding that same part seperately (forgotten by supplier) I need to provide constraints to prevent it from being Packaged ..

Best answer by James62

These positions come from the STEP file. The imported feature at the assembly level contains no information if all the components come in as solids, and there are no assembly level curves, surfaces or anything defined inside the STEP assembly file as assembly level entities.

STEP file contains no references. no constraints, it contains just the geometry and the information about absolute coord systems of each component. All Creo does is not turn the components into packaged states, unless the user edits the definition of a component, but the components aren't really assembled or referenced anyhow after coming in on import.

1 reply

J
James621-Visitor
1-Visitor
May 2, 2016

Creo simply reads position of each assembly component from the STEP file. Each of the component's own origin can be placed elsewhere than the origin of the assembly itself.

Components of an imported assembly might just become packaged once they go through edit definition.

B
btimmerman1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
May 3, 2016

One would expect packaged items while repositioning through Edit Def or moving etc. Thing is that this does not happen at all. Even when rearranging items to and from other assemblies, positions are fine while I just deleted any reference to the imported step by deleting the Import Feature(s). So the question remains where these positions are stored without having constraints in any way?

J
James621-VisitorAnswer
1-Visitor
May 3, 2016

These positions come from the STEP file. The imported feature at the assembly level contains no information if all the components come in as solids, and there are no assembly level curves, surfaces or anything defined inside the STEP assembly file as assembly level entities.

STEP file contains no references. no constraints, it contains just the geometry and the information about absolute coord systems of each component. All Creo does is not turn the components into packaged states, unless the user edits the definition of a component, but the components aren't really assembled or referenced anyhow after coming in on import.

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