Updating parts in assembly without closing and reopening?

[jlcochran1]

Updating parts in assembly without closing and reopening?

I am new to Alibre 8. In SolidWorks or Inventor I frequently have parts and an assembly open. I will change the individual part and switch to the assembly window to immediately see the change. I have not figured out how to update the assembly to show the new part without closing and reopening the assembly - very cumbersome. Rebuilding the assembly does not seem to update parts.

How do you manually force the assembly to update to the current parts without closing first?

 

[Mibe]

The trick is to open the part from WITHIN the assembly:

Right Click on the part in the Design Explorer and select "Open Part".

Be sure to hold down SHIFT if you want to open that part in a separate window, without all the other assembly components in transparent colors.

 

[jwknecht]

Re:

The trick is to open the part from WITHIN the assembly:

Right Click on the part in the Design Explorer and select "Open Part".

Be sure to hold down SHIFT if you want to open that part in a separate window, without all the other assembly components in transparent colors.

This is a very good and much repeated question/tip, which brings up the question (an enhancement request). Shouldn't Alibre make the option of "Open Part in a Separate Window" an obvious option by adding it to the Right Click Pull Down Menu? This would seem to be an easy enhancement.

 

[Willbur]

There is another quirk to this (showed up in v8.0 and haven't had time to test whether it's been fixed in SP1). If you open the part in a separate window as the others suggested, you need to say no when it asks if you want to save changes - the changes will update in the assembly, but will not be saved to disk until you save the assembly. If you say yes, the changes in the part are saved to disk and don't update in the assembly - this is a confirmed bug, but I haven't had time to test whether it's fixed or not.

 

[jlcochran1]

Thanks for the tips, I will experiment this week. I just downloaded the software Friday, I am assuming I have SP1, but how can I verify?

 

[Mibe]

Re:

Thanks for the tips, I will experiment this week. I just downloaded the software Friday, I am assuming I have SP1, but how can I verify?

Select "Import" from the main window. If "Rhino Files" are one of the file formats, then it's SP1.

It's also possible to go to "Help>About Alibre Design". The last portion of the version number is "8074".

 

[jlcochran1]

Thanks, I do have SP1