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ptc-28451861-Visitor
1-Visitor
May 10, 2010
Question

Is it possible to MERGE two Assemblies?

  • May 10, 2010
  • 2 replies
  • 4324 views
I use Pro-Engineer 4.0 extensively with work, and am currenly working to provide a library for our design team. My library assemblies can be broken into two parts. Lets call it a foundation (common to all parts in the library) and then everything else which is built on this foundation assembly. I am able to build a great library, but a few times a year, the foundation changes and I must rebuild all the assemblies in the library. (recreating Pro-program, relations, and skeleton parts) Is there a way to merge two assemblies to produce one assembly? This way I could merge the new foundation with the already existing assemblies? If not, does anyone know how to make suggestions to PTC for new features?
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2 replies

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DavidButz1-Visitor
1-Visitor
May 10, 2010
Not sure of exactly what you are trying to accomplish. You are obviously aware of Top-Down design techniques since you are using Pro/PROGRAM and Skeleton Parts. Have you also looked at Layouts (aka Pro/NOTEBOOK), where you can Declare parts and Assemblies to a governing Layout? Are you just trying to keep the "other" parts independent of the "foundation", or is it more subtle than that? Is your foundation a single part? I'm guessing when you use the word "merge" you mean something more complicated than using Component/Merge. Is there any way you can just modify your foundation and use SaveAs or Backup to preserve Legacy versions?
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ptc-28451861-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
May 11, 2010
Thanks for the relpy, Yes I am using layouts to drive all of my models. The problem is that I can not keep my parts independent of the foundation assembly. The pro-program that controls which parts are supressed, are written in the foundation assembly. I have many different instances of this. One foundation assembly configuration may have 100 parts turning off and on, while another foundation assembly might be controling 50 different parts. When the new "generic" foundation becomes available, I must re-program all of my parts for all instances in the library. Unfortunately Component/merge and a saveAs or backup will not solve my problem. One possible solution is to create a subassembly that holds all of my part configurations. This subassembly would have all of my program logic within it. Then I could more or less plug or unplug from my foundation assembly. (using flat/recursive command I can have the BOM of my drawings show correctly.) This method is unfavorable because the models then do not represent the manufacturing process. I now have a subassembly that is only for Pro-E. This is why I would like to merge this subassembly with my existing foundation. Creating one assembly. Hard to explain, but I am fairly certain that the functionality I am looking for does not exist today.
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GregFrankland1-Visitor
1-Visitor
May 20, 2010

I am not sure if this is what you are looking for or not, but Edit>Restructure allows you to move components from one assembly to another within the assembly context. I created a simple test, which was an assembly with a subassembly assembled as a component in the initial assembly. I was able to move a component from the subassembly and make it a component of the initial assembly. A couple of things to remember here are:

(1) you cannot move the first component of an assembly during the restructure process.

(2) I am not sure if your Pro-Program/ relations/ parameters etc. will carry over with the part as well.

Just thought I would throw this out there.

-Greg

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