TL;DR: I’m looking for a way to make a feature that deletes all bodies in a certain area (like Extruded Cut or Delete/Keep Body) WITHOUT creating a parent-child relationship with those features, such that the body-deleting feature will stay unsuppressed as features above it are suppressed and unsuppressed.
Full version:
I have a part that consists of multiple bodies and can be in its basic configuration (“O”), or it can have either or both of two sets of optional features (“A”, “B”, and “A+B”). Feature sets “A” and “B” (each in their own folder for easy suppressing and unsuppressing) each adds several new bodies to the list, while also changing the names of some existing bodies from basic configuration “O”.
In addition to these feature configurations, these bodies are also mirrored about the right plane, and the part is intended to be configurable to include just the left-hand bodies (“LH”), just the right-hand bodies (“RH”), or both (“L+R”). My goal is to create two body-deleting features–one to delete the left-hand bodies and isolate the right, and the other vise-versa–so that I can switch between “LH”, “RH”, and “L+R” just by suppressing/unsuppressing each of these two features as needed. The problem, though, is that I’m finding that body-deleting features (including Delete/Keep Body and Extruded Cut) will automatically establish a parent-child relationship with the features/bodies they affect, such that as soon as one of those features is suppressed, the body-deletion feature is suppressed as well.
Here’s an example of what that looks like: Say I’m in configuration “O/L+R”, and I want to get it to “O/RH” by deleting the left-hand bodies: I’ll sketch a rectangle on the Right Plane that encompasses the whole part, then use it to create an Extruded Cut pointing left, checking “all bodies” under Feature Scope. Now the left-hand bodies are gone and we’re in configuration “O/RH”, and when I highlight the new Cut feature to see its parents, it points exclusively to the “O” features. Now I want to switch from “O/RH” to “A/RH”, so I unsuppress the “A” folder, and voila. The Cut still works, deleting all left-hand bodies old and new. So far so good. At this point, highlighting the Cut again shows that it has parents not only from the original “O” features, but also from the “A” features folder. Now, if I want to go back to “O/RH”, I just re-suppress folder “A”, right? NOPE, the Cut has fully (autonomously) latched onto the “A” features as parents, so when I re-suppress folder “A”, the cut is suppressed too. Where I wanted to see “O/RH”, I’m left with “O/L+R”, and if I try to unsuppress the “RH” cut, it brings the “A” features with it.
Is there any way to make a body-deletion feature that doesn’t automatically establish those parent-child relationships? It seems like such a simple function: I want to cut away all bodies in the path of an extruded cut, regardless of which preceding features they came from or how they might change; in other words, every time the part is rebuilt, I want the cut to behave as if I’d just made the feature and checked “all bodies” for the first time. Any help is much appreciated!