Sorry if this has already been discussed; I can’t find the right terms to describe what I’m looking for that won’t also produce results about lightweight parts or saving as external surfaces.
My company creates drawings for our machines to show the paint department where to place decals. This means that we have the biggest models we handle in assemblies with lots of other parts (decals) with lots of surfaces (at least enough to visually discern orientation).
On the more intensive end of things, the model starts becoming really slow to open and save when we’re about halfway done putting decals on, then the drawing is even worse.
There exists an option to save an assembly as a part with ‘all exterior faces’ which for our models means literally all faces. I have an imported model of a 4.3L six cylinder engine that shows all the wiring and connectors. Is there some way I can remove the detail from the engine and have it still look like an engine without just creating a dummy model?
How about a way to save out a top level machine as only the outside profile?
I saw an article on Javelin about saving only visible, but it was published in 2015 and I don’t see that option anymore. The best way I can describe it is if we put the component on a vacuum table and made a mold of it, but without the convex limitation underneath.
wow that is a lot to put on a model.
Have you considered using blocks for the decals?
the 4.3l engine, you should be able to get into the tree and hide features or bodies. I would look into using the display states for this.
Saving a copy of the model with exterior surfaces would not be ideal, as it becomes unattached to the real model and then all the work would have to be redone if changes happen.
I would look at converting the decals into blocks and then just using the block on the drawing instead of adding the decals to the model.
Another option would be to try and freeze the decals, if you really want to show them on the model that may free up some rebuild and save time. That option saved a lot of time on a part that was way to detailed to be in a model one time I used it. it was a bit of a pain to set up but once it was done, it would open fast and save fast.
Save as part. You can “save as” part file, which will reduce loading time insce its just one file loading. And you can select the exterior faces option. Not a lot of control of what is removed and not as easy to update if you make a lot of manual edits to the part to reduce more detail. Can still result in a lot detail if your assembly has complex parts, which can still slow down drawings due to lots of edges to drawing.
Defeature. A lot of options but on really large assemblies I find it to be so slow it nearly unusable in some cases. However the new silhouette option has some nice options where you can enclose solid parts in a box, or type fit polygon, etc. You can even write rules, for example, all parts with a custom property called “Name” that contains the text “Bolt”, enclose it in a box. Then it can be stored as a derived config.
Speedpak. Creates a derived configuration where you select faces or bodies to extract. Part bodies not selected are left behind as a “ghost” image. Not sure how they pull it off but its impressive. You just con’t select any of the ghost details. You can elect not to show the ghost images which saves some memory. Speedpak is older than Defeature and feels more complete. It has options when laoding assemblies to use the “Speedpak” config and there are UI options to toggle back and forth. Feels like it should be combined with defeature in some way to avoid connfusion. Its my preference as it feels easiest and gives a fair amount of control.
Good ole manual simplfication with configurations. We’ve used this going back 25 years, when computers were much slower and the options above didn’t exist. basically all parts you model you create a derived configuration and suppress stuff. For parts this is may be features you suppress like cosmetic fillets and internal features. For assemblies this is suppressing internal parts / sub-assy and other stuff not need in higher up assmeblies. Both take a bit of forethought on building feature relations and mates, so you have to deisgn your parts with this future task in mind.
Have not considered that but I kind of like the idea. My main concern is that we often find ourselves failing to think in 3D when we’re working on 2D drawings, and that could lead to mistakes. We have certainly in the past (much better about it lately) defined a 3/4" wide surface as a datum and then referenced that surface to control a hole through a plate 10 feet away from it because it was a handy straight line in the view where it was shown…
Blocks are a little bit of a blind spot for me as we usually just use them for notes. Do they scale with a view? Can we load images in them?
Unfortunately, our engine vendor sends us step files. There are just surfaces, solids, and gap errors. I have started asking for parasolid models and that has helped some, but it still just a lot of information… Suppose we could suppress wiring and tubing, etc.
I have found that with a lot of our models, exterior face part models run significantly worse than the original assembly, but then again I haven’t tried it for five years or so at this point.
It just seems like the surface bodies it generates take more processing than the original parts we built. Is there anything to that?
But the exterior face option does not do what I would like; it just grabs all faces that are on the exterior of every part rather than just the faces on the outside of the assembly. Furthermore, our models account for root gap in welding, so it would need to be bridging gaps to figure out the exterior faces.
I think that reading through your response, speedpak will be my best option for the current model. I will have to experiment and see if pulling a specific face will be better or worse than the entire component.
We did make a deliberate effort to build lightweight configurations all the way up through one section of a particular special project we were working on, and it made a big difference. The difference here though is that we are working with twenty year old models for the most part rather than building from the ground up.