Hello,
Our workflow is based on skeleton modeling, until now I was using the 3 original planes to constrain which works fine for parts created from that specific skeleton. Often we can reuse components made from a different skeleton in our assembly and we are not allowed to use features or surfaces to constrain.
They ask us to mate the wireframes (path for our sweep in the skeleton). I don't know if you tried it or work that way but this method is tedious when you have a fair amount of sub-parts/assemblies. For each component we have to derive the wire and constraint to the same reference in the skeleton. This implicates toggleling with the visibility of many things during the process to be sure we always mate to the base skeleton, never another component.
I'm wondering if this process can be automated or less painful to do. I though maybe I could define iMates to each wire line ...nope. Someone has a suggestion?
Thanks,
How about placing the component in your assembly and then using the "Ground and Root Component" tool to constrain it at the origin. You can now edit the constraint and offset it to get it to the location you want (unground it first).
Another option would be to use the "Place at Component Origin" tool. This will allow you to select which part origin to use when you place the item in your assembly.
In Inventor 2013/1014 the commands are located on the Productivity panel of the Assembly tab.
Kirk
Hi! I don't fully understand your workflow here but I am wondering if you have tried using UCS? You can define UCS with a few picks (associative to geometry or relative to origin). Then, you can create a constraint between two UCS. Would it help?