Merge or shrinkwrap some parts of the tree

[CarlosCaseras]

I have an assembly with a number of instances The assembly consist of several parts with instances as well. That is the good structure to create and control the model shapes and coordinates systems, which are really funny. But, I also want to produce an output of each assembly instance (step file or equivalent, with hierarchy) where most of the tree were merged. This is because the model tree is too complex and the final user of the model should only see 2 or 3 parts which are representative. It is actually only one subassembly what I want to show as a merged solid. Can I have somehow that "simplified tree" model in creo to keep it associated to the design models? Any idea is welcome

[MartinHanak · Accepted solution]

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@CarlosCaseras wrote:
I have an assembly with a number of instances The assembly consist of several parts with instances as well. That is the good structure to create and control the model shapes and coordinates systems, which are really funny. But, I also want to produce an output of each assembly instance (step file or equivalent, with hierarchy) where most of the tree were merged. This is because the model tree is too complex and the final user of the model should only see 2 or 3 parts which are representative. It is actually only one subassembly what I want to show as a merged solid. Can I have somehow that "simplified tree" model in creo to keep it associated to the design models? Any idea is welcome

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Hi,

I guess you can:

• create new empty part
• assemble this part into sub-assembly temporarily (or suppress it when merge operation is finished)
• merge all sub-assembly parts into the part (by reference)
• save the part

Then you have to create another assembly instance and replace sub-assembly by the above mentioned part in it.

Note: I am not sure whether the above mentioned procedure will work properly.

[CarlosCaseras]

Following that, I couldn't make the part merge each instance of the subassembly properly. To be more precise, using the merge feature, it copied the shape of the parts but not their location. Somehow it seems to follow the generic locations always. In the family table of the new part I added columns for the merge parts (that I have to specify again in the new family table) and for the reference assembly where it should be regenerated, which doesn't seem to be working actually. I also tried with inheritance, copy geometry and shrinkwrap but none of them regenerates according to its instance.
I could try to redefine the parts so that I don't need to update the locations, but it is not too elegant.
I think I will create the merged parts by hand and assemble them as per your procedure.
Kind regards

[Pettersson]

A more elegant way of doing this might be using a Simplify Interchange assembly (to replace using simprep), a Functional Interchange (to replace using family table) or an Envelope part (to replace using simprep). Perhaps the Envelope part would be the best way? Create an Envelope of the subassembly as a solidified shrinkwrap, then make a simprep that replaces the subassembly with the Envelope. This will retain associativity with both geometry and placement.