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Hello everyone,
Most of the replies I received about the assembly pattern thread detailed that people tend to avoid creating mirrored parts whenever they can. I was lucky in my case to find a work around. I am curious though, why does the community try to avoid creating a part using mirror?
The reason my company uses it is to reduce error. When you make a part that is a left hand, or right hand formed part from the same flat pattern they are symmetrical to each other. Instead of creating two independant models for the same part, my company creates one of the two, then makes a geometrically dependant model based on the first. This ensures that changes made to the original also changes the mirror.
Why do people try to avoid this and create two independant parts? Ideally I would be able to create the left and right hand versions in the same model, using different instances. However, changing a formed angle from +90º to -90º also changes the dimensions since the form is based on one side and you will be out a material thickness. Is there another way to do this using family tables? It would be great if both left and right hand parts were part of the same model, in a family table.
The company that I am currently assigned to has the procedure of:
* If it is an Identical Mirror of a sheet metal part, it is OK. Create the first part and the flat pattern, then mirror to generate the mirror.
* If it is a Identical Mirror of a Machined part we are to create them independent. For some reason Pro/Man does not like the first feature being a mirror and then will not generate the G-Code.
We have also run into an issue where there is a family table of similar parts (holes or spacings different) if these are mirrored then the next level up assembly has to be regenerated twice in order for the correct instance to show up. This causes issues in ProductView since if it can not regenerate the first time it crashes (an will not generate an image for the drawing).
Just my two pence!
Best of luck which ever way you decide to do it!
Kevin Brandt
Independent Contract Engineer
That is an excellent idea. I have tried making the parts from one family table. The problem is, when you input a negative value for an angle, the material forms on the other side of the sketch line. This means that mirrored parts are off by one material thickness per form. This would be the ideal method of making left and right hand parts, since not only would they be geometrically dependant on each other by they would also be the same file (different instances).
That is of course, unless someone knows a way to work with this?