Split a part and behave like two.

[shastu]

Is there any way to split a part and have it behave as if it were two.  For example.  Lets say I have a steel tube that is 40 inches long.  After it is placed in an assembly I want to split it into two 20 inch pieces(minus half the saw width) and have them behave seperately.  Is there any way to do this?

[shastu]

I thought maybe a picture would help.  The tube is welded on both sides of the pivot point as shown in the top view of the bmp file.  This would be done in an assembly.  Then the tube needs to be cut and pivot about that pivot point like in the bottom view.

[JDMather]

Multi-bodty solids and then push out to individual solids.
Could probably do a Adaptive part instead, but I don't think that would represent the real world.
(unless this is the machine that is doing the saw cut and you are trying to animate the operation - if that is the case I might have to think about it a bit on how I would do it)

[shastu]

I don't see how that is any different than just creating it as a sub-assembly.  When you push out your multi-part out to components you would have to unground your pieces and constrain them just like you would a normal assembly, and I would have to put the assembly into my assembly so that I can allow it to bend, not the original multi-part.ipt file.  Obviously I have little experience with multi-body parts so I might not be correct in what I am saying.

[hansome_one]

Sounds pretty straight forward.  You essentially have 3 parts that you are talking about then. You have your full length piece before welding & fab, then it gets cut  after welding into 2 pcs, OK.  To me this sounds like a great situation for some Level Of Detail (LOD) & positional rep (PR) use.  I might just setup all base parts in the default LOD (minus the 2 cut pcs). position them into place.  For this I might suggest not doing any welding in inventor for now, this get a little tricky, but however it can be done, but lets just work on the assembly. 

So now with all begining base components assemblied and constrained, you can use the default LOD, or create your own. I will call defalut for now. So RMB, create new LOD named XXX, (will activate with new creation) find long length of tube & RMB & select "suppress".  Now you will have two create your 2 other cut pcs into single parts, or just one part if it is cut right down the middle.  Now go and place the 2 new cut pcs that replace that tube into that  assembly & position & constrain, in that LOD - XXX.  Note, that in the default LOD you will have to "suppress" the 2 cut pcs.

Now, for the movement of the two cut pcs vs. the single tube, you will need to create a new Positional Rep (PR)., then in the new PR, find the constraints that link the long tube to your brackets or misc parts and pcs & RMB, then override or suppress.  now sometimes you might have to go back into the original assembly and change the way you constrain parts to each other to get them to override and function correctly when trying to achieve these scenarios.  Hope some of this info gets you going to what you want..

IV2011

XP pro

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! JD is right. If I were you, I would use Multi-Solid workflows in this case. To be more specific, here is what you might consider.

In the part to be split into, use Split -> chooes Split Body option -> select a split tool.

Now the solid body becomes two solid bodies.

Next, use Make Components command to push out these split bodies into a new subassembly or the existing top level assembly.

The nice thing about the workflow is that the geometry for each split body is controlled by one single ipt file. Any change in the source will propagate to the pushed body part.

Let me know if more information is needed.

Thanks!

[JDMather]

---

@johnsonshiue wrote:

Hi! JD is right. If I were you, I would use Multi-Solid workflows in this case. To be more specific, here is what you might consider.

In the part to be split into, use Split -> chooes Split Body option -> select a split tool. 

---

Actually, Split will not account for the saw kerf (removed material).