Replace with Shrinkwrap

[Aaron_Daniel]

I more frequently have subassemblies that ultimately become weldments after some fine adjustments.  These would most appropriately be representsented as single part merged solid shrinkwraps in the final assembly drawing (in a BOM).  The help section that seems to address this is 'To Replace a Component with a Shrinkwrap Model'.  Between steps 3 and 4 is this note:

with absolutely no link or information about how to perform the steps to create a 'Paramtric Shrinkwrap object with source reference information', except the picture of an icon to click.  

If the information in the help section 'About Replacing Assembly Components' is accurate, it would seem that replacing components with a shrinkwrap should be easily accomplished.

Searching help for how to create a 'Paramtric Shrinkwrap object with source reference information' produces no useable results. Either the information isn't there, or my searches simply aren't finding it.

Any help would be approciated.

[psobejko]

I believe that the "parametric shrinkwrap" is a functionality available if you purchased the Advanced Assembly extension (AAX).  What the help documentation seems to be saying is that the parametric-shrinkwrap can be substituted in automatically in an assembly that contains such parametrically-shrink-wrapped component.

If you don't have AAX, it can still be fairly feasible to make a regular shrinkwrap of the weldment-assembly and then perform the replace-by-unrelated component procedure.  Of course, this all depends on how the weldment assembly is placed in its parent assembly and how other components in the parent assembly depend on the weldment assembly for their placement.  After all, there will be a loss of fidelity in the shrinkwrap, and if components in the parent assembly depend on geometry that was removed during the shrinkwrap, then you'll have to go through their placement re-definitions.  Another potential problem to consider is that the regular shrinkwraps are not "associative" and therefore will not update if the weldment design changes.

[Aaron_Daniel]

Hi psobejko

Thanks for taking the time to respond.  I do have AAX.  I routinely use skeletons within subassemblies that control components and features within the subassembly, and therefore allows it to be "non-dependant" on any other parts or assemblies. I use a skeleton in a primary assembly to establish locations of subassemblies.

I have not been able to accomplish replacing a selection of components with a shrinkwrap to work and be "automatic" as described in About Replacing Assembly Components. 

The only way I have found that works reasonably well is to create a final part in an assembly, create an external shrinkwrap feature of previous parts within that part, then create a family table - one instance with all the all the parts except that final part - and another instance with only the final part.  In this way, the family table provides the associativity to be able to 'automatically' have a bi-directional exchange of a shrinkwrap of parts (in my case a weldment) with a group of components ( a subassembly of parts that will become a weldment), and seems to update the shrinkwrap routinely. 

This works, but seems like a lot of steps and effort if there are other concise ways (not adequately documented) that would accomplish the same thing.

[psobejko]

I've played around with this and I can get it to work in this way:

1) in the weldment assembly, create a new part

2) activate the new part; create a shrinkwrap in it; make the shrinkwrap "external" (by default, it is of the "in assembly context type")

Now, go to the assembly that has the weldment assembly as a component.

In this assembly, you can now replace the weldment assembly component using a reference model - namely the part you created in steps 1 & 2 above...

[Aaron_Daniel]

Yes - this is the set of steps I described - less the steps of making it a family table with seperate instances of the weldment assembly and the shrinkwrap part.  Without the family table steps, there are two issues (at least in my system). 

First, the shrinkwrap part (as well as the individual weldment parts) gets listed in a Bill of Materials of a drawing of the weldment subassembly (though this can be handled with the additional work of setting up the appropriate simplified reps for the drawing).

And Secondly, even by being very careful about additional datum references to be included in the shrinkwrap, there are usually one or more assembly placement constraints that fail and must be re-selected anytime the weldment subassembly is interchanged with the shrinkwrap. And to replace the weldment assembly with the shrinkwrap part, the filename of the shrinkwrap part has to be known or discovered.  At least if it's related within a family table, there is no additional searching through part lists.  The placement constraints can also be established with an interchange file, but those are often more difficult to manage than a family table.

I continue to wish the help files would provide more detail about the steps necesessary for this to function in the  way PTC intended (if their inference to this capability is accurate).