replace assembly component

[mr.ska]

replace assembly component

I'd like to suggest the ability to "replace" a component in an assembly with another component (or assembly), and/or the ability to take a component in an assembly and turn it into a subassembly, thereby allowing me to, for example, turn a component into a sub-weldment, or something like that.

 

[Anonymous]

This would be a very useful feature for replacing bolts of different sizes in an assembly.

 

[rbrian]

replace assembly component

Mr Ska - anyway you could make - even a static image example of that - and share it? With annotation would be better - see SnagIt for help! Robert

 

[Willbur]

Replacing parts in assembly

There is a sorta roundabout way to replace all instances of a part in an assembly - I've used it at times and for replacing screws it generally works quite well (the catch is that the geometry needs to be similar - in other words, any faces that you constrained to need to be in the same location on the new part as the old one - if face 6 was the bottom of the screw head on the original, it would need to be the bottom of the screw head on the new one as well for it to be a drop-in replacement...otherwise you need to fix the constraints :roll. Now for the method (which works both in the repository and the file system):

1. Close the assembly
2. Rename the part that you want to replace (you can also delete it and resurrect it from the Recycle bin - just be careful on network drives in the file system as everything doesn't end up in the Recycle bin).
3. Reopen the assembly
4. You'll get a dialog box saying it can't find particular parts - use the replace button in the window to pick the new part you want to use.
5. When you hit OK, it will fill in the parts that you just selected with the same constraints as the original.
6. Save the assembly.
7. Undo whatever you did in step 2.

Unfortunately, this only works if you want to replace all instances of the part - if you only want to change a few and not others there's really no nice way to do it - highly suggested for the next version....