Why can we not re-order our Assemby Explorer items?

[GaretDH]

Obviously the part workspace is history based, and the order in which features are built have affect the outcome, hence the dogbone and all of that.

But why can't we re-order the items in an assembly workspace? GM already sorts parts to the top of the list and subassemblies to the bottom, so it must be possible to some degree. Other than this, GM simply adds new items in the order they were added to the assembly. Same with constraints.

I find myself wishing I could change the order of parts/assemblies and constraints, just for neatness and ease of finding parts in the assembly Explorer. Hardware, for example, is a big one. When I build assemblies I often find that hardware is randomly scattered along the list; sometimes I have to change or add something at a later time, and that part is going to be way down the list from the others it should be with. Likewise with assembly constraints. If I have a certain mate pattern for a repeating subassembly (that can't be handled with the assembly pattern tool), it would be useful to have those constraints living right next to each other on the list.

In the grand scheme of things I'm sure this isn't that important. Just something I wish I could do to smooth out the workflow a bit.

 

[bigseb]

I agree. In fact I would like to go one step further and see Geomagic introduce folders to the explorer (same as with Solidworks) for the part and assembly workspace.

 

[TimoCAD]

Well, and if there are folders, there should be multibodies in *.AD_PRT'S. You know what I mean, Boolean-Operations within one *.AD_PRT, for complex designs within a single file.

 

[protarawizard]

I also agree the constraints should be able to be ordered. I often edit the ones created and they update just fine; so I doubt it is a difficult programming issue.

In earlier times I tried to beat the system by creation of dummy constraints just to get some "placeholders" into the tree. These placeholders I would suppress till needed.

Nowadays I tend to ignore the Constraints view; other than as visual indicator that all are valid. If I need to look at (find) the constraints between objects in the assembly I use the Constraints view attached to the parts or sub-assemblies.

On a related note re keeping things tidy; I'd also like to see a (dare I say it, hard-coded) F2 for rename of things in Parts and Assemblies. The right-mouse->select rename from the context menu bizo is a pain.