Must be a Monday

Question

Can anyone tell me why Pro makes life so difficult?

I have a part in my assembly, and like all other mojor parts, I have a common coordinate system in the part that matches the ACYS0 of the assembly. In the case of this part, it lies far outside the part. Now I am going to use this part on both the left and right side of my assembly (it is a door handle) so I needed to add a new coordinate system to assemble the part on the other side of the assembly. As the part has its own center plane, logic would dictate that I could mirror the CSYS to get the new one - but not in Pro/E, because pro won't mirror CSYS's.

So I have to make a point at CSYS0, mirror that point across the center plane., create a new CSYS at the new point, then create ANOTHER CSYS over the new one to allow for the rotation (part is not parallel to the center plane of the assembly). Why does it take 4 features in Pro to do what should be albe to be done in 1?

- Monday rant off -

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Jeff Sampson Engineering
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swschultz · Answer

I personally don't like using coordinate systems for locating a majority of my components. In my mind doing this is somewhat of a fallback to the way many aerospace companies used to work, and some still do.

Whether you're going to use a csys or other datum-type geometry, in most cases it is a much better approach to put these datum features into a skeleton part inside the assembly into which these parts are to be assembled. In this manner, you eliminate adding datum geometry which is specific to how the component is located in one single assembly, thereby making the component assembly-independent allowing it to more easily be re-used in other assemblies or future projects, without the component retaining extra baggage as to how it was located in another assembly. This does not answer your original question, other than to point out at what level these coordinate systems should potentially be placed. This is obviously a very small portion of what they consider top down design.

I don't know the details of your specific assembly, but if you need or want the part to be assembled using a coordinate system, you might consider assembling the component into the assembly using standard mate/align type assembly constraints, and then creating a transformation-type coordinate system in the assembly's skeleton part, then lastly redefine the component so it is assembled to this new csys located in the skeleton model. You could then use this same process to located the second copy of this component in its mirrored location. This does not reduce the extra effort in assembling the component, but it does eliminate the component's tie to one specific assembly. Hopefully this makes sense.

Best Regards,

Scott Schultz
Principal Consultant
3D Relief Inc.
3700 Willow Creek Drive
Raleigh, NC 27604
(919)259-0610
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