2D drawing using an existing assembly as a guide

[bmferguson]

Hi,

I'm very new to Alibre. If I want to make a 2d drawing using an externally created assembly as a guide, what are my options? Ideally, I would be able to import the assembly, design around it, and then delete it, leaving only the part. I know that it's possible to use assembly boolean blanks and tools to achieve some of it, but it only gets me partway there. Unless I'm mistaken:

- one can't import an assembly into a part.
- one can only use 2d drawing in an assembly while editing an object, so the object would have to be created outside of the assembly without the reference assembly as a guide.
- once an edited object is created in an assembly, even if I delete the reference assembly, I can't redefine the remainder as a part.

I would greatly appreciate any corrections to my current understanding and any insights you may have about how I can accomplish the aforementioned task.

Thanks in advance,
Bruce

 

[DavidJ]

You can open the assembly, insert a New Part and design that in the context of the assembly. After designing the part, save the assembly. There will now be a part file containing the new part - you can derive 2D drawing from that part file.

I'm a bit puzzled by you mention of 2D drawing in this context. Not sure exactly what you want to do.

 

[bmferguson]

Thanks for responding so quickly, David.

I should've stated that I'm also relatively new to CAD in general, so I don't know all the best practices yet and don't always use the correct terminology. For instance, perhaps I should've used the word "sketch" instead of "drawing". What I'm trying to do is design a housing for some of the servos of a robot that I'm building. To guide my design, I have the servo manufacturer's CAD file for the particular servos that I'm using. My thought was that for some of this housing, I could create a 2d sketch and extrude it along the servo assembly's length since it's a relatively consistent shape along that axis. I previously thought about having a solid object and using the servo assembly as a tool to subtract it from a block. However, I need to be able to adjust some of the dimensions, so the 2d sketch route seemed like a better approach.

I've realized that part of my problem is that I'm currently running Alibre Design on a MacBook Pro using Parallels VM and Windows 11. The behavior is inconsistent at times, which has caused some confusion. Even so, Alibre Design is very intuitive, and I'm climbing the learning curve faster than I thought I would. My plan is to switch to a computer with the correct system requirements.

All the best,
Bruce

 

[DavidJ]

Though not officially supported, many users successfully run Alibre on Mac hardware. You may have to optimize resources for the VM as 3D CAD is quite demanding, graphics adapter can sometimes be the limiting factor.

 

[bmferguson]

Gotcha. Thanks again.