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1-Visitor
October 19, 2017
Question

How to control design features in assembly (similar to work with solids in Inventor)

  • October 19, 2017
  • 13 replies
  • 5137 views

Hey fellow CREO users,

 

please share you experience in the way how you control design of the assemblies.

 

In Inventor I used to creating the part which I'd call multibody and it would be the basic control file for my assembly. I would control the overall dimensions and common features, attachments, etc. in this file and then derive solids into the part adding other design details.

 

Let's say I have a number of brackets attached to the structure with a attachment points pattern. I need to play around with the dimensions of brackets depending on the attachment points locations. So I would like to look at one part with attachment points and modify another part depending on the attachment locations and surrounding structure.

 

What is the best practice to do that?

I would like the sketches of these parts to be linked, so if I were to change a hole location in one part it would automatically change it in the other part. Is this something that can be achieved with Creo?

 

Thank you very much for your help! 

13 replies

1-Visitor
October 20, 2017

Look into skeletons.

http://support.ptc.com/help/creo/creo_pma/usascii/#page/assembly%2Fasm%2Fasm_three_sub%2FAbout_Skeleton_Models_in_Top-Down_Design.html%23

 

You can also create references from one part to another in the context of an assembly, but I would recommend against that if there isn't a lot of thought put into managing them as a group.

 

There is no identical work path.

pvn1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
October 20, 2017

Thank you for suggesting skeletons. Haven't heared about this yet.

 

When working with parts through an assembly, how stable is it? Would my constrains fall through if parts (features) I was referencing will change? That was the main issue in Inventor. Lack of stability when you revise part based on a feature of another part. This is why working with multibodies (solids) was so helpful. 

StephenW
23-Emerald III
October 20, 2017

I have never had any issues when working with parts inside of an assembly. I do most of my design on parts within an assembly.

HamsterNL
18-Opal
October 20, 2017

Besides the skeletons that @dschenken mentions, you could also look into Publish Geometry & Copy Geometry.

 

https://support.ptc.com/help/creo_hc/creo30_pma_hc/usascii/index.html#page/assembly%2Fasm%2Fasm_three_sub%2FAbout_Copy_and_Publish_Geom_Feat.html

(Please remove the Google Analytics parameters at the end of the URL, ea everything after the .HTML)

pvn1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
October 20, 2017

What do you guys usually do? Let's say for a simple example where I need to control geometry of several parts depending on the attachment points between them and surrounding structure?

It's pretty easy to do with my Inventor set of skills, but challenging with this new Creo tool with no experienced live users 🙂

24-Ruby III
October 20, 2017

Hi,

 

please attach picture of design you want to create in  Creo.

21-Topaz II
October 25, 2017

Skeleton models with publish and copy geom features are very robust and enable rapid iteration of design changes.  I don't do any development work without them anymore.  They do require the extra cost advanced assembly extension.

 

Creo gives you robust reference management that will help you keep your assemblies updating properly.  Whenever you select a reference, either in sketcher or in other features, Creo tells you that reference's ID and the feature it belongs to.  By paying close attention to those you can build very robust yet very interconnected assemblies.  There are also tools for replacing one reference with another, either for individual features or globally.

 

This is under the umbrella of "Top Down Design" and Creo has a very robust suite of tools for this, with skeletons & copy / publish geometry features being one of the core components.