Large assembly efficiency

[jbrehmer]

I know of some companies using CREO are building large assemblies of entire cars or trucks, or larger.

How does CREO fare with such assemblies? What's a good setup to making CREO more efficient? What options would I need to set to improve opening larger assembly structures in CREO?

When I say more efficient, I'm referring to opening a large assembly and it's duration; does CREO lag when adding or removing features?

Thanks,

Jason

[StephenW]

Large assemblies can be painful. You'll need simplified representations to make top level modifications.

Work in sub-assemblies and then just check the top level model once you have your concept.

Large assembly drawings are even more painful. You'll want to really figure out your simplified reps then.

I use the OPEN_SIMPLIFIED_REP_BY_DEFAULT YES option to prompt which simplified rep I want to open.

Turn off COMP_ASSEMBLE_WITH_INTERFACE NONE  You will not want to wait while the software trys to find automatic interfaces for a bolt in 1000 places.

Try to reduce model errors. Having a ton of lower level model issues makes your regen time drag. I work on the highest level models at my company. No one in the other groups realizes the time it takes when you have 100s or 1000s of failures in lower level models.

[TomD.inPDX]

PTC has spent a significant amount of resources to make Creo large assembly compatible.

I believe there is an entire course curriculum centered around this concept.

If this is important to your enterprise, you might contact PTC training.

[Chris3]

Stephen LaPha gave one of the best large assembly presentations I have seen to date:

Bringing Large Assemblies Down to Size

Make sure you understand all of the config options presented and don't just blindly enable them.

Also I suggest you look into substitute interchange assemblies. These are not mentioned a lot but can make a huge difference.

As others have mentioned it helps to plan ahead. We have "no_hardware", "No_components" and "no_small_components" reps in all of our default parts / assemblies which makes it easier at the higher level assembly stage.

[swood]

I tried to view the presentation you linked, and get an error that I don't have "sufficient privileges for this resource or its parent to perform this action." Any idea how I can view this presentation?

[Chris3]

When PTC switched forum providers all of the attachments got screwed up and it hasn't been fixed. I have re-attached it here.

[swood]

Thank you, Chris!

[rcrerar]

I am in agreement with the other comments on use of simplified reps. It's well worth spending time getting used to the different types of rep too. Sometimes you actually want to see things but by using master rep this is a heavy model. Try geometry or graphics reps if you can get away with it and if it helps improve performance on one of your models.

Another technique that is useful is top down design rather than bottom up. There are a number of things that you can do to plan your product structure  and as the lower models populate the top level comes together on it's own (more or less). I tend to use skeleton models to be able to construct an empty product with placements for the major elements. So if you look at a car or other vehicle they may have elements such as chassis, engine, braking system, coolant, interior etc these would hang in a top car level and then as each element evolves the car reveals itself. Ideally you want to do the top level using empty reps or even before any content is added.

there is much more to it that that but it should get you started. Hope this helps