Hello,
The company I worked for just acquired the full version of AFX(Advanced Framework Extension).
Our main objective is to use it for 80/20 Inc. profiles and connectors, we were expecting to have more profiles and connectors available for the 80/20 Library but it has the same as the free version.
Overall the extension is very powerful, saving a lot of time for framework design and in the case of 80/20 the connectors library saves a lot of time to quickly visualize the right connector to use, and not waste time in standard constrains. But also it has created new issues, for example having to rename all the profiles to upload the assembly into our system following parts naming criteria for the company, leaving us with an unclear opinion so far of the extension.
The issues we are having are as followed:
The extension automatically names the profiles in the order that they are created, with an option to chose the counter start and increment.
This limits the way the engineer organizes the files because in the case of same profiles with of the same type but different lengths, you would want to quickly identify them by exactly that, the length. An other way of naming the parts could be the ones that are modified, a drill for example, making the project parameter counter impractical for an automated process.
In the online help webpage this is the closest explanation I found Creo Parametric Help Center but its not clear enough to be of any help.
When it comes to 80/20 profiles the representation you chose in AFX changes the weight of the part, the library parts control the representation by suppressing extrusion cuts therefore removing material. This may had an effect when I tried to create new 80/20 profiles, I believe I am missing a parameter or the name of the feature is incorrect. I opened a part from the root library, created a copy, modified the copy to have the same profile that the library is missing, saved it in the root library, changed the txt file of the names and even created a new .GIF. And it appears in the profiles menu but it fails to generate a profile.
I have been searching information on how to create library parts especially for 80/20 parts but haven't had any luck finding it.
Just as the 80/20 profile library, the 80/20 connectors library is missing parts. The main difference here is the references, since I was able to insert a part adding it to the root file library but when opened from the extension, the standard assembly constrain menu opened. I would like to know how to add connectors with the same interface that the extension have, clicking 2 faces and the bracket, gusset assemblies automatically in the center of both profiles.
The extension has the option to create drawing for each part and subassemblies, but the default drawing template is an empty one. For company standards we have company drawing templates, it would save a lot of time to have the option to select the template that the automatically generated drawings uses. I haven't found any information on how to do that.
I would greatly appreciate any help with this extension, because it actually saves a lot of time and effort but with all of these issues feels a little bit incomplete.
Thanks!
