Edit only one instance of copied component (e.g add fillet to only a portion)

[jbbwa]

General question related to managing / editing copied components via a specific question.

Imagine you have a deck made up of a collection of planks.  Each plank is a component and each is a copied version of a base plank.  This is helpful for later changing a dimension such as the length.  Now all the planks are joined edge to edge, and you'd like to add a fillet to the perimeter of the joined planks.  How would you do this so that you are only adding the fillet to the outside perimeter?  In my experience, adding the fillet to any edge of one component will do so to all copied instances, hence the fillet would all be present on the internal interfaces, not just the perimeter.

Copy and paste new would be one option, but would lose the ability to later adjust a dimension to be carried through all dimensions.

Really appreciate any insights here.

[etfrench]

Copy|Paste New is the only way (that I know about) to make a change in a single item in a pattern or set of copied components.  If you're making a global change to a dimension then you can move the Timeline marker to just before the Copy|Paste New operation, make the change, move the Timeline marker back to the end.  The Copy|Paste New component will have the new dimension.

[HughesTooling]

One option is create an empty component then copy the body from the first component, do this for all the planks. After the copy the copied bodies are independent, if you want to change all components roll the timeline back before the first copy.

Just experimenting and I found a one click option for creating the copies, use boundary fill and set the operation to New Component. Note, make sure the component you want to contain the new components is active.

Mark

[jbbwa]

What's interesting is that both you and HughesTooling suggested a similar approach of rolling back the history marker to before the copy, paste new command and making the change to have it propagate through all components.  So I'm convinced this must be a valid solution, but I've tried this a few times on both my active models and a couple of sandboxes but am not getting the expected behavior - e.g. once a copy, paste new component is created, it will always be treated independently, even when rolling the history marker back to before this action was taken and editing here.  My guess is that it's something on my end since two people have confirmed this approach.  I'll try to capture a video later of my experience.

[HughesTooling]

Rolling the timeline back doesn't work the same with Paste New and copying a body into an empty component. Paste New creates a totally independent copy at the point you make the copy there is no history between the original and the copy. If you create a body you have the option or rolling back before the copy to make edits to all copies or independent edit after the copy. The copied bodies can be made with copy paste, patterns or mirror.

Here's a screencast I made a while ago to demonstrate using pattern body to make individual copies.

Mark