Flexibility within Assemblies

[moregan]

Hi all,

I'm using WF4, and this is a problem that has plagued me for some time.

Flexibility is a useful feature, and I use it fairly regularly. Flexibility within a component is effective and fairly straightforward. However, I would like to take a sub-assembly that has about ten parts and establish flexibility within this sub-assembly. The part is an adjustable width brace. The problem I run into, is that when I'm trying to define the flexible dimensions, I can't access the assembly definitions. I can click the individual parts and make their dimensions flexible, but I would like to make the distance between the parts flexible, not the size of the parts themselves.

I know that there is a solution to this, as a predecessor of mine had accomplished exactly this, however I cannot replicate it and it is incredibly frustrating not knowing why. I'm sure there is probably some very simple explanation, however, all the material I can find about flexible components pertains to generating and maintaining flexibility within individual parts, and not within the context of assemblies, which is the result of the difficulty.

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[psobejko]

I've run into this before and my solution is to "query-select" and make sure you choose the "component" of this sub-assembly and not some feature of that component itself.

Suppose you are making "Dimensions" of SUB_ASSEMBLY flexible: query-select and choose the to-be-varied component (in the Pick From List, it will be a line item that looks like PART_NAME:CXXX(SUB_ASSEMBLY), where CXXX is the ID of the component), then the dimensions related to the component placement will show up.

I find that if you don't query-select, you are actually selecting some feature of the to-be-varied component (in the Pick From List, it would be a line item that looks like PART_NAME:FXXX(EXTRUDE_1), where FXXX is the ID of the feature).

Another method is to use the "Find" function and look for dimensions in the sub-assembly that you are trying to make flexible.  Again, look for the ones that have (COMPONENT) at the end of their name.

[JimTVancouverCa]

Hello Paul,

Great post.  You can also define the flexibility at the sub-assembly level so that whenever someone assembles this sub-assembly into a using assembly, the user will be prompted "Model <model name> has pre-defined flexibility.  Would you like to use it for flexible component definition?"

In my test, the only way to select the dimension in Creo 2 M120 was to use the CTRL-F find function.

Best regards,

- Jim