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Interchange assembly question

lbeidler
2-Guest

Interchange assembly question

A question for the interchange assembly gurus…

Sometimes our customers will request LED lights instead of the default incandescent on our trailers. To facilitate this, we have a Component Interface in both the LED light and the original to speed up assembly – both models simply assemble to a coordinate system origin in the mounting grommet. I thought it would be nice to further speed this up by relating the two models with an Interchange Assembly. It’s been years since I’ve used these, so I’m hoping you all can help me figure out what I’m doing wrong.

I added the two lights to my interchange assembly and added a reference tag for the coordinate system origins. So far, so good.

When I went to swap out the light in the trailer, I got the following error message:

“Component Interface missing, continuing placement will cause interface to be removed. Yes/No”

So I choose yes, then the component assembly dashboard pops up, and it says fully constrained, so all I have to do is MMB and it completes. So it’s two more mouse clicks per light. No big deal, but we have at least 13 lights per trailer, so I’d like to eliminate that.

A little bit more background: the two lights are identical, except for parameters – one was duplicated from the other, so they do both have the same component interface, even and the names of the component interface are the same. (I know, I know, we probably should have made them instances of a family table, but here we are).

Am I missing a step that would allow me to eliminate this error message?

Thanks.

The picture below shows the two components in the same model tree - as you can see, the component intefaces are the same.

model_tree_compare.JPG


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1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Almost 3 years later, but maybe usefull for other too 🙂

Today I am also updating my Interchange Assembly to include an Component Interface to all our fasteners. (The Component Interface is an axis constraint and a mate constraint).

For the Interchange Assembly, you will need to add a Reference Tag and then "drill down" to the Component Interfaces of your part, then select the Component Interface (in your case "PICK_CS_LIGHT").

As soon as I added this Reference Tag, I could swap my fasteneres (constrained by the Component Interface) without the warning you mentioned.

Note: We are working with WildFire 4.0

View solution in original post

7 REPLIES 7

Hi Lyle...

Hmm.. I don't know that I've ever used a component interface with an interchange assembly. I bet without the interface, it probably works perfectly. You've added the ref tag for the coordinate system... but unless there's a way to add a ref tag to a component interface, it seems like you're stuck.

It feels like maybe this was an oversight on PTC's part. The years rolled on and Interfaces came along and someone forgot to add in a switch to allow them to work through an interchange group. I'd actually submit this to PTC Customer Support. It seems like something that the developers might want to know about.

Sorry for the delay in responding... I must have missed this original question.

Thanks!

-Brian

Almost 3 years later, but maybe usefull for other too 🙂

Today I am also updating my Interchange Assembly to include an Component Interface to all our fasteners. (The Component Interface is an axis constraint and a mate constraint).

For the Interchange Assembly, you will need to add a Reference Tag and then "drill down" to the Component Interfaces of your part, then select the Component Interface (in your case "PICK_CS_LIGHT").

As soon as I added this Reference Tag, I could swap my fasteneres (constrained by the Component Interface) without the warning you mentioned.

Note: We are working with WildFire 4.0

Thank you, this will surely be helpful - if not for Lyle, then for other visitors of the thread!

So what caused the message probably was that component interface and interchange assembly tagging were somehow in competition.

By adding the component interface to the tags, you solved the conflict.

I am marking your post as Correct Answer, to indicate a resolution was found (thread had more than 1000 visits in the past), but welcome if someone experiencing the issue can confirm it solves his/her warning message, too.

vzak
6-Contributor
(To:gkoch)

Gunter, probably it makes sense to add TPI doc for this case ? It will be correct not only for mapping component placement that uses Interfaces, but also for CopyGeometry that ref's PublishGeom feature. Common thing here is that along with geometry references (CSYS in this case) there is Interface (or Pubgeom) reference of feature type, that also need to be mapped. Reason :

- user has CSYS1 that belongs to INTF1, that should connect ONLY to CSYS1 / INTF1 on another part If there is no such condition, what was INTF used for ?

- mapping just CSYS1 to CSYS1 on replacing part does not say anything also matching INTF ... hence Replace will not go smooth.

Regards

- Vlad

gkoch
1-Newbie
(To:vzak)

There was an SPR about this message, which had been closed with a similar answer some time ago.

I have updated and published the related article CS2949 : "Component Interface missing, continuing placement will cause interface to be removed" when replacing an assembly component with component interface in Creo Parametric.

Let me know, if you believe it needs improvement.

Gunter

vzak
6-Contributor
(To:gkoch)

It looks fine Gunter. Once you added PubGeom into the description now I'd also add it to Resolution section.

- Vlad

gkoch
1-Newbie
(To:vzak)

Agreed! Done!

Thanks,

Gunter

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