Is there a way to hide a part body in a drawing view?

[patrickberry]

A coworker brought up an issue with multi-part bodies that I can't find an elegant solution for.  He has an multi-part body where one of the bodies was a part that he derived in to use as a reference for another part.  He built the part then turned the visibility off on the original body. 

When he created a drawing of the part, both bodies were visible.  He'd like the original to be hidden, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that.  The work-around I came up with was to delete one of the faces from the body to convert it to a surface, which can be hidden in the drawing.  This is a really ugly solution but I can't think of a better one.

Any ideas?

Patrick

[BMiller63 · Accepted solution]

there is not an option to Hide bodies in a drawing view, although it's ben requested ever since multi-bodies came about.

Generally what most would do is to bring the derived body in using the Work Surface option in the derive dialog. Then you can toggle it off as needed later. You can also toggle the transluecent option on/off if it helps.

The other thing you could do (maybe) is use the Combine tool to get rid of the derived solid once it's no longer needed.

There is another option, which is to use the Make Components tool to write the solid bodies out as individual (deriived)parts, but I'm not sure that's the way to go with a typicl derived workflow like you described.

Bringing in the derived part as a work surface is the best way to go in the future, I think anyway.

[Inv_kaos · Accepted solution]

Edit the derived part and change it to a surface. You can then turn the visibility of the surface off. Unless you wan't the derived solid in your final product, alway derive as a surface. 

[IgorMir]

Hi Patrick

In your post it is a bit hard to follow what method is used. Is it Derive components or Multi-body Solids? If Derive components is used then derive the reference body as surface and turn its visibility off. If multi-body solids - create an assembly of the components and set the one you don't want to see in the drawing as Reference one.

Regards,

Igor.

[BMiller63]

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@Inv_kaos wrote:

Edit the derived part and change it to a surface. You can then turn the visibility of the surface off. Unless you wan't the derived solid in your final product, alway derive as a surface. 

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Will that break any featues that were based on the solid version?

[stevec781 · Accepted solution]

If it was only needed as reference geometry then delete it using the delete faces feautre - just select tbe lump option and its gone.

[Inv_kaos]

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@BMiller63 wrote:

Will that break any featues that were based on the solid version?

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No, the geometry will be the same.

And to add to what steve said, you can also just delete one non-used face and it becomes a surface which can be turned off.

[stevec781]

If you use it as your last feature it has no effect on what was modelled before it, and can always be rolled back for editing or suppressed just like any other feature.

The other big advantage of this way over hiding is that your mass props will be correct.  Hidden bodies still get included in mass props where deleted bodies dont.

[patrickberry]

Yeah, that's what I told him to do and it worked, but it just doesn't seem like an ideal solution to me.  You can turn the visibility of surfaces on and off, it just seems logical to add that ability to solid bodies as well.  Thanks.

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@stevec781 wrote:

If it was only needed as reference geometry then delete it using the delete faces feautre - just select tbe lump option and its gone.

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Patrick

[patrickberry]

He started the part by deriving in another part to use as a reference.  I would have recommended deriving it in as surfaces, but that was water under the bridge at that point.  The main part was then modeled as a seperate body, so the derived part became a multi-body part.

I also recommended that he save out the part to make it independent, but he already had the .idw layed out.

Thanks.

Patrick

[Inv_kaos]

Why would you want it as your last feature? Isn't the point of referencing this geometry so that you can use it to generate your part. Most of the time the first thing in the browser is the derived part(s), as surfaces, which are then used to create the part geometry. At the end the surface visibility is turned off.

[stevec781]

You make the delete face feature the last one.

Sometimes you want to reference solid geom instead of surfaces.  So import your solid reference geom, build your part, then instead of hiding it you use delete face with lump option selected.  You now have a clean part with accurate mass props and can roll back and still see your ref geom.  Very handy when using multi body workflow.

[brian.cranston]

Could you hide the edges you don't want.  If it is just a few, you can select them in the view, RMB, and turn off visibility.  If it is a lot of edges, then find the features in the tree, RMB  and "Select As Edges".  Then RMB on the selected edges in the view and turn off visibility.

-Brian Cranston

[patrickberry]

Not in this case.  He was using shaded views in the drawing, so if you hide the lines you still have the bitmap image of the part.

Patrick

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brian.cranston wrote:

Could you hide the edges you don't want.  If it is just a few, you can select them in the view, RMB, and turn off visibility.  If it is a lot of edges, then find the features in the tree, RMB  and "Select As Edges".  Then RMB on the selected edges in the view and turn off visibility.

-Brian Cranston

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[JamesGoodhew1955]

Thanks for this!!! I knew about delete faces because it comes up sometimes, but I don't generally have a use for it, so didn't know there was a 'select lump' tool