Assembly features

Publication Number
spse01675
Assembly features

Publication Number
spse01675
Proprietary and restricted rights notice

This software and related documentation are proprietary to Siemens Product

Lifecycle Management Software Inc.
© 2010 Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software Inc. All Rights Reserved.
All trademarks belong to their respective holders.

2 Assembly features spse01675

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-1

Assembly-based features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-1

Activity: Assembly features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-1

Activity: Assembly features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-1

Open the assembly with inactive parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-1
Set the Inter-Part options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-2
Activate parts in the assembly in order to select them for modification . . . . . . A-2
Turn on the display of one of the reference planes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-2
Construct an assembly cutout through parts baseplate.psm and
motormount.psm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-3
Turn off the reference plane display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-9
Observe the changes in PathFinder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-9
The activity is complete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-10
Activity summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-11

spse01675 Assembly features 3

Lesson

1 Introduction

Welcome to self paced training for Solid Edge. This course is designed to educate you
in the use of Solid Edge. The course is self-paced and contains instruction followed
by activities.

Solid Edge self-paced courses

• spse01510—Sketching

• spse01515—Constructing base features

• spse01520—Moving and rotating faces

• spse01525—Working with face relationships

• spse01530—Constructing treatment features

• spse01535—Constructing procedural features

• spse01536—Modeling synchronous and ordered features

• spse01540—Modeling assemblies

• spse01541—Explode-Render-Animate

• spse01545—Creating detailed drawings

• spse01546—Sheet metal design

• spse01550—Practicing your skills with projects

• spse01560—Modeling a Part Using Surfaces

• spse01610—Solid Edge frame design

• spse01640—Assembly patterning

• spse01645—Assembly systems libraries

• spse01650—Working with large assemblies

• spse01655—Revising assemblies

• spse01660—Assembly reports

• spse01665—Replacing parts in an assembly

spse01675 Assembly features 1-1

Lesson 1 Introduction

• spse01670—Designing in the context of an assembly

• spse01675—Assembly features

• spse01680—Inspecting assemblies

• spse01685—Alternate assemblies

• spse01690—Virtual components in assemblies

• spse01695—XpresRoute (tubing)

• spse01696—Creating a Wire Harness with Harness Design

• spse01424—Working with Solid Edge Embedded Client

Start with the tutorials

Self-paced training begins where tutorials end. Tutorials are the quickest way for
you to become familiar with the basics of using Solid Edge. If you do not have any
experience with Solid Edge, please start by working through the tutorials for basic
part modeling and editing before starting this self-paced training.

1-2 Assembly features spse01675

Lesson

2 Assembly-based features

In some assemblies, you may want to construct a single feature that modifies more
than one part. For example, a pattern of cutouts may extend through several parts.

In other cases, you may want to construct a feature within the context of the
assembly, rather than in the Part or Sheet Metal document.
You can use the feature commands in the Assembly environment to construct
features such as cutouts, revolved cutouts, holes, chamfers, and threads. You can
also mirror and pattern these features.
In Solid Edge, you can construct two types of assembly-based features:
• Assembly Features

• Assembly-Driven Part Features

spse01675 Assembly features 2-1

Lesson 2 Assembly-based features

You use the Feature Options dialog box to specify whether the assembly-based
feature you are constructing affects only the selected parts (Assembly Feature),
or affects all parts with the same document names as the selected parts
(Assembly-Driven Part Feature).
Note
The Feature Options dialog box is not available until you set the
Assembly-Driven Part Feature option on the Inter-Part tab of the Options
dialog box. When this option is disabled, you can only construct assembly
features.

You can use the assembly-based feature commands to modify the solid body, but not
any surface bodies (construction bodies) that may reside in the part documents.
Some types of assembly-based features can only be constructed as assembly
features. For example, the Chamfer and Thread commands do not support the
Assembly-Driven Part Feature option.

Assembly Features
When you set the Create Assembly Features option, the feature affects only the
parts you select.
For profile-based features, the reference plane, profile, extent definition, and surface
geometry resides in and can only be viewed from the assembly document where the
feature was constructed.
This option is useful when you want to modify one or more commonly-used parts,
but do not want to affect other instances of the same parts in the active assembly or
other assemblies that reference those parts.
You do not need write access to the affected part files to construct an assembly
feature.

Assembly-Driven Part Features

When you set the Create Assembly-Driven Part Features option, the feature affects
all parts with the same document name as the selected parts.
The reference plane, profile, and extent definition, resides in and can only be viewed
from the assembly document where the feature was constructed. The surface
geometry resides in the part documents. The surface geometry can be viewed in the
part documents, and any other assemblies that reference the part documents.
This option is useful when you want to globally modify one or more parts while
working in the assembly.

2-2 Assembly features spse01675

 Assembly-based features

You need write access to the affected part files to construct an assembly-driven
part feature.
A part document that contains an assembly-driven part feature is associatively
linked to the assembly document where the feature definition (reference plane,
profile, and extent definition) resides.
You can break the links that control an assembly-driven part feature by in-place
activating the part document, selecting the feature in PathFinder, and clicking the
Break Links command on the shortcut menu. After the link is broken, it is likely
that some aspects of the feature will become undefined. For example, the reference
plane may no longer be associated to its parent face. You can repair the broken links
by selecting the feature, and using the Edit Definition option on the command bar to
redefine the reference plane, feature extents, and so forth.
Note
When you set the Assembly-Driven Part Feature option on the Feature Options
dialog box, any existing assembly features are temporarily hidden while
constructing the assembly-driven part feature. This prevents you from using
edges on assembly-driven part features to construct the assembly feature.
When you finish constructing the assembly-driven part feature, the assembly
features are redisplayed.

Drawing the Profile

When constructing a profile-based assembly feature, you can draw the profile on one
of the default assembly reference planes or use a part face to define a profile plane.
You can use the draw commands to draw the profile, or if you have created an
assembly sketch, you can use the Select From Sketch option available when
constructing a cutout or revolved cutout. The Text Profile command is not available
when creating assembly features or assembly-driven part features.

Dimensioning the Profile

You place dimensions to the profile elements in the same way as you would a
profile-based features for a part. Before you can place dimensions or geometric
relationships to part edges, you must set the Peer Edge Locate command on the Tools
tab. You can then place dimensions or relationships between the assembly feature
profile elements and the edges of other parts in the assembly.

Defining the Extent

You can specify that the feature extends through all the parts, extends by a finite
distance value, or define a from/to extent. When defining a from/to extent, you
can select an assembly reference plane or a part face to define the feature extent.
Associative links are created when you select a reference plane or part face to define
the extent, and the links are displayed in the bottom pane of PathFinder when
the feature is selected.

spse01675 Assembly features 2-3

Lesson 2 Assembly-based features

Selecting the Parts

You do not have to apply the feature to every part that the profile geometry passes
through. The Select Parts step allows you to specify which parts you want to modify.
Parts that lie within the range of the profile and the feature extent are automatically
selected. You can add parts to the select set by clicking on the part you want to
add, and you can deselect parts by holding the SHIFT key and selecting parts that
are highlighted.
You can select a subassembly as the select set of parts to modify, and all parts that
intersect the feature are modified. If parts are added to the subassembly later,
the new parts are not added to the feature scope. If you want the new parts to
participate in the feature, you must edit the feature and return to the Select Parts
step and select the new parts to which you want to apply the feature.

Assembly-based Features in PathFinder

Separate lists are maintained for assembly features (A) and assembly-driven part
features (B) in PathFinder. When constructing assembly-driven part features,
the symbols for the affected parts (C) are changed to show they have links to the
assembly.

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 Assembly-based features

When you select an assembly-based feature in the top pane of PathFinder, the
parents that control the feature are displayed in the bottom pane of PathFinder. For
example, when you select Cutout3 (A) in the top pane, in the bottom pane it shows
that C.PAR is the parent part for the coincident reference plane on which the profile
was constructed. Also listed are the parts (C) that were modified by the feature.

Editing Assembly-based Features

To edit an assembly-based feature, select the feature entry in PathFinder and click
the Edit Definition button on the command bar. Thecommand bar for the feature
is displayed, so you can select the step you want to modify. For example, you can
return to the Select Parts step and select additional parts to which you want to
apply the feature.
The Select Feature Components command on the Pathfinder shortcut menu can be
used to select the parent components for an assembly feature. This can be useful in
determining the parent components for the feature, and for managing the component
display. For example, after you select the parent components, you can use the
Show, Show Only, and Hide commands to display or hide the parent components for
editing purposes.
Note
Assembly features and assembly-driven part features are not included in
the undo list.

Opening Part Documents with Assembly-Driven Part Features

When you open a part document that contains an assembly-driven part feature, a
dialog box reminds you that the part document has links to the assembly where the
feature was constructed. The dialog box allows you to specify whether you want to
open the assembly document or the part document.

spse01675 Assembly features 2-5

Lesson 2 Assembly-based features

Mirroring and Patterning Assembly Features

You can mirror and pattern only assembly features that were constructed in the
current assembly. You cannot mirror or pattern assembly-driven part features. You
can specify which parts are included in the mirror or pattern feature. If you add parts
to the mirror or pattern feature which were not in the parent feature, a message is
displayed to instruct you the parts must also be added to the parent feature.

Suppressing Assembly-based Features

You can use the Suppress and Unsuppress commands on both types of
assembly-based features, but the behavior differs somewhat.
When you suppress an assembly feature, a symbol is added adjacent to the feature
in PathFinder to indicate that the feature is suppressed. When you suppress
an assembly feature, the feature is suppressed for all the parts affected by the
assembly feature. You cannot suppress an assembly feature for individual parts
in an assembly feature.
When you suppress an assembly-driven part feature, no symbol is added to the
feature in PathFinder to indicate that the feature is suppressed. Because the surface
geometry for an assembly-driven part feature resides in the part document, the
suppress symbol is added to the part documents in PathFinder.
You can also suppress an assembly-driven part feature on an individual part by
in-place activating the part, and suppressing the feature on that part in PathFinder.
When you return to the assembly where the feature was defined, no indication of the
suppress operation is displayed in PathFinder, but the graphic display is updated to
for the part that had the feature suppressed. You can redisplay the feature using the
Unsuppress command in the assembly document or the part document.

Placing an Assembly that contains Assembly-based Features as a

Subassembly
Both assembly features and assembly-driven part features are viewable and can be
used for positioning purposes when the assembly is placed as a subassembly in
another assembly.

Assembly-based Features and Draft Documents

When constructing drawings of an assembly that contain assembly features, you can
specify whether the assembly features are displayed in a drawing view using the
Drawing View Properties dialog box. This applies only to assembly features, not
assembly-driven part features. Because assembly-driven part features physically
modify the part document, they are always displayed in a drawing view.

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 Assembly-based features

Creating Stand-alone Documents for Components with Assembly Features

You can save an individual part in a assembly to a new document using the Save
Selected Model command. This is useful when you have used assembly features
to modify a part.
Because assembly features are visible only within the context of the assembly, saving
a part with assembly feature modifications to a new document allows you to create a
drawing for that part, prior to creating an assembly drawing. You can also use the
stand-alone document for manufacturing or analysis purposes.
The documents you create using the Save Selected Model command contain an
associative part copy of the part in the assembly. Associative part copies do not
contain a feature tree.
You can use the Save Selected Model dialog box to specify the new file type you
want. You can save the component as aSolid Edge Part document (.PAR) or a Sheet
Metal document (.PSM).

Assembly-based Features and Alternate Assemblies

Assembly features, but not assembly-driven part features, are allowed when working
with a family of assemblies, but certain restrictions apply. Inter-part links are not
allowed when working with an alternate assembly, and both types of assembly-based
features allow you to create inter-part links. When converting an assembly to a
family of assemblies that contains inter-part links, a dialog box is displayed to warn
you that the inter-part links will be deleted.
If you anticipate creating a family of assemblies that will contain assembly-based
features, you should consider using only assembly features and not place dimensions
or geometric relationships to part edges. This approach does not create inter-part
links. For example, you can use an assembly sketch to define the profile for an
assembly feature, and use assembly reference planes for positioning dimensions and
geometric relationships.
For more information on these restrictions, see the Alternate Assemblies Impact
on Solid Edge Functionality Help topic.

Assembly Features and Simplified Parts

When you create an assembly feature (assembly-based feature or assembly-driven
part feature), any simplified parts that are displayed in simplified mode in the
assembly are redisplayed in design mode when you select them to be included in an
assembly feature.
Any parts that were selected for an assembly feature cannot be displayed in
simplified mode, whether the parts were modified by the assembly feature, or not
modified. The simplified mode is also not available if you suppress the assembly
feature.

spse01675 Assembly features 2-7

Lesson

3 Activity: Assembly features

Activity guides you creating a cutout traversing multiple parts in an assembly.

Turn to Appendix A for the activity.

spse01675 Assembly features 3-1

 A Activity: Assembly features

Overview
An assembly cutout allows you to cut multiple parts within the assembly
environment. The resultant cutout can be applied only in the assembly (assembly
feature) or it can be associatively linked back to the part or sheet metal files
(assembly-driven part feature). This capability reduces the chance of error through
misalignment that could happen when through holes spanning multiple parts are
cut independently.

Objectives
Learn to use the Assembly Cutout command. Assembly Cutout places a cutout in
multiple parts from within the Assembly environment. To do this, draw a sketch
on one of the assembly reference planes, and then select the parts to cut. For this
activity, construct an assembly feature cutout in the assembly as shown in the
following illustration.

Open the assembly with inactive parts

▸ Open assembly_cut.asm. In the Open File dialog box, select the Inactivate all
option. Turn shading on or off as preferred.

spse01675 Assembly features A-1

A Activity: Assembly features

Set the Inter-Part options

▸ On the Application menu, click Solid Edge Options. In the Solid Edge Options
dialog box, click the Inter-Part tab. Check all the options and then click OK.

Activate parts in the assembly in order to select them for modification

▸ Activate the files baseplate.psm, motormount.psm, and motor.par. Select the
three parts by holding down the <Ctrl> key. Right-click to display the shortcut
menu, and then click Activate.

Turn on the display of one of the reference planes

▸ Turn on the display of the x-z plane. In PathFinder, click the check box on the
x-z plane and on the Reference Planes.

A-2 Assembly features spse01675

 Activity: Assembly features

Construct an assembly cutout through parts baseplate.psm and

motormount.psm
▸ On the Features tab, in the Assembly Features group, choose the Cut command
.

▸ In the Feature Options dialog box, select the Create Assembly features option
and click OK.

Option A
Create Assembly features—creates the cutout feature in the assembly but
does not affect the part files.
Option B
Create Assembly-Driven Part features—creates the cutout feature by
modifying the part files directly.

spse01675 Assembly features A-3

A Activity: Assembly features

▸ Select the assembly reference plane as shown.

▸ On the Home tab, in the Draw group, choose the Include command. In the
Include Options dialog box, select the options shown and click OK.

A-4 Assembly features spse01675

 Activity: Assembly features

▸ Select the circle on the motor.

▸ Click the Accept button.

spse01675 Assembly features A-5

A Activity: Assembly features

▸ Type 15 for the offset distance and then click to the outside direction of the
selected circle. Choose Close Sketch.

A-6 Assembly features spse01675

 Activity: Assembly features

▸ On command bar, click the Through All extent option. Position the cursor so the
arrow points in the direction as shown, and click to accept.

▸ Click the deselect button to deselect the parts highlighted in PathFinder. These
are all the parts that the cutout affects.

spse01675 Assembly features A-7

A Activity: Assembly features

▸ In PathFinder, select the files baseplate.psm (A) and motormount.psm (B) for the
parts to cut. Click the Accept button, and then click Finish. Both cutouts, driven
by the circle and are placed in the assembly only.

A-8 Assembly features spse01675

 Activity: Assembly features

Turn off the reference plane display

▸ Click the Select tool. Right-click in the working window to display the shortcut
menu as shown, and then click Hide All→Reference Planes.

Observe the changes in PathFinder

▸ Observe the changes in PathFinder. Since the Create Assembly features option
was selected, the cutout is shown as an Assembly Feature.

spse01675 Assembly features A-9

A Activity: Assembly features

▸ If the Create Assembly-Driven Part features option was selected, then

PathFinder would show the following.

baseplate.psm and motormount.psm are now shown as associatively linked to

the assembly sketch. The baseplate.psm and motormount.psm files are actually
modified by the cutouts. Investigate this by saving and closing this file. Then
open either baseplate.psm or motormount.psm to verify the modification.

The activity is complete

Save and close the assembly. This activity is complete.

A-10 Assembly features spse01675

 Activity: Assembly features

Activity summary
An Assembly Cutout can be applied in the assembly only (assembly feature) or the
cutout can be applied directly to the part or sheet metal files (assembly-driven part
feature). This activity only covered the assembly feature cutout option. You can go
back later and use the assembly-driven part feature cutout option to observe how the
part files have cutouts applied directly to them.

spse01675 Assembly features A-11