While working with bodies or components, how to set the move menu to default to Body or Component?

[Inspections_JCH]

While working on the positioning of bodies or components, (I am not in sketch mode) I select the move command and it offers to move a 'Face'. Each time I want to move a body I must change this field in the move tool. Is there a way to set the move to default to any choice other than 'Face'?

[HughesTooling · Accepted solution]

I guess one way would be use selection priority. As for components, really you should avoid using move and capture position, in bigger assemblies capture position is not efficient and will hit performance. You should be using joints to position components.

Mark

[laughingcreek · Accepted solution]

you can't.  if you pre-select an object move will start with that object type.  single click selects a face. double clicking on a body in the model space selects the component, not the body.  select a body in the bowser.

[Inspections_JCH]

I am always interested in issues that degrade performance. I have searched for the term 'Capture Position' and I find several how-to articles in the documentation, but I did not see an overview or general discussion of what 'Capture Position' does for me. Have you seen any articles in the documentation that discusses this?

[laughingcreek · Accepted solution]

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@Inspections_JCH wrote:

... I have searched for the term 'Capture Position'... Have you seen any articles in the documentation that discusses this?

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No, I haven't.  It's discussed extensively in these forums.  I personally think AD originally had bigger ideas about how to use this command, but ultimately abandoned them.

there is one application that might be worth using it for that involves positioning a jointed component in multiple position to figure out geometry for a mating part.  I've never found that useful, and find it a questionable workflow.

other than that one limited use case I've not seen a legitimate reason to leave position captures in a time line permanently.  The only use I see for them is to temporarily hold components apart while a joint is applied.  after the position capture should be deleted from the time line.

position captures are a performance killer, and frequently can cause modeling issues/errors that are hard to trace.  And you can forget about having a fully parametric  model if you use them.