Has anyone ever mastered assembly tweaks, or is the consensus that they are
just broken\inconsistent in MDT (MDT 6 SP 3)?
I'm trying to move our drafters beyond projected 2d assembly drawings and
MDTs inconsistent tweaks are not helping. Example, tweaking a "parent" part
will move some of the "child" parts but not all of them.
To test, I took 3 parts from our current product; an I\O plate and two
support brackets. Both support brackets have right angle tabs to attach to
the I\O panel. Both brackets are constrained in exactly the same way; 1
insert and 1 line to line, constraints applied in the same order. To
prevent any of these from being grounded, I added a dummy part1 as the
top\grounded part. Tweaking scenarios:
If the I\O panel is above the two brackets, both move when the panel is
tweaked. This makes sense relative to browser order.
If the I\O panel is below both brackets, the top bracket will stay in its
original place, the second bracket will move with the panel. If I reverse
the order of the two brackets the behavior follows - the top bracket always
stays in place, the lower always moves. This does not follow browser order.
If I change the constraints on the lower bracket (the panel still being the
lowest part), to a line to line and a flush then the middle bracket does not
move.
I realize that changing the constraint type from insert to flush solves this
simple 3 part assembly, but trying to follow this logic thru a 200 part
assembly is pretty well impossible, particularly when the person
placing\constraining parts is not the same as the person doing the tweaking,
and at the time of part constraining, no one knows how the parts will be
tweaked in the assembly drawings.
The Knowledge Base suggests: a) change the order of the parts (doesn't work
consistently as evidenced by the above), b) try changing the order parts are
picked when constraining (doesn't make any difference as far as I can tell),
or c) adding a negative constraint the child part that moved (works, but is
cumbersome at best and messes up trails - one child does not have a trail,
the other does, even tho both are in their original position. Yes, trails
could be deleted, but....)
For those who have switched to Inventor, is it any better??
Thanks
Steve Miles
Olympic Medical