wich derive strategy should i use?

[Anonymous]

I have an assembly with two large plates with about 200 holes (different sizes).  the plates are two different ipt files and have lots of studs and angle welded to them about 1,700 (parts) in the assembly.  I need to take the two mian plates make it into one big plate (single ipt file) and change sizes of various holes and orientation.  I would like to know which way to derive parts is better/easiest.  There is make part, make componets, create i assembly, export objects (although i have yet to get this to work), shrinkwrap subsitute, and derive.  Im a little overwhelmed right now.  ive been doing lots of reading and looking.  am i overthinking this and need to just save as rename plates and save copy as iam and replace with new plates that i create?

Reason i am changing this is because we can now get 70' lengths of plate and revised design drawings from our supplier.

[BarryZA]

Based on my understanding from reading your post:

How about derive the 2 plates into 1 new single body part.

supress link from assembly

place new plate back into orig. assembly

you will now have to modify your original 2 plates for hole changes.

open your derived part, unsupress link and update, supress link

go back to your assembly and voila!

If you supress your 2 plates I THINK you will preserve your constraints, and if you make them phantom in your BOM they will not show up in your parts list.

If you don't supress the link you will create some sort of cyclic dependancy error.

All that export object does is it earmarks that part/solid. So that when you go open a new part and derive, it can be brought across.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Dang that just might work.  ill see what happens when IV opens up and ill get started on it.  Thank you for the insight.