Best way to mirror

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

We often have to mirror entire assemblies or individual component but we are not familliar with the mirror feature. We have tried different ways in the past week and they seem to work for now. We use skeleton to generate component because that's how we were taught, but sometimes we skip this long process and simply do our parts directly.

Here are the 3 methods we have found and used so far. Should we stick to one of those or is there another method that provides better results?

- mirror bodies in skeleton and generate new component

- use make part in skeleton to select bodies while checking the mirror box

- derive all bodies of a skeleton and check the mirror box during the process

Thanks.

[blair]

It really depends on your work flow and preferences. We use the Derive and Mirror for parts that have a LH and RH version.

We really don't use a lot of Skeletal, but other do (again personal preference).

If you gave a problem to 10 experienced IV users, you would get 10 different solutions to the problem with all of them correct.

[ic198]

I mirror the parts in an assembly. I start with a skeleton, make components to create all the RH side parts and insert these into an assembly. I then use Mirror in the assembly (on the Assemble Ribbon, Component tab) to create mirrors of the required parts.

As Blair said, lots of different ways to skin a cat. The reason I uae the method above is you can do a lot of work on the RH side part after it is derived from the skeleton and this is all carried over into the mirrored part. This means a lot of work can be done outside of the skeleton part, keeping the skeleton (relatively) simple.

The disadvantage is that Inventor screws up the frame of reference of the mirrored part. It will come into the mirroring assembly in the correct place, but it you try and insert it into a different assembly it will come in mirrored about a different plane and will need to be manually constrained to get it to locate properly. Does anyone know why this is, or what I'm doing wrong?

[blair]

Possibly the original part is referencing the global co-ordinates in the IAM file and when you mirror it, uses the (negative) of this. Hence it appears in the correct (mirrored) position. When you bring any part into a IAM file it seems to position at the last place you clicked on the screen (just like changing the orbit position).

[ic198 · Accepted solution]

I usually use the XZ plane as my mirror plane (creating the left and right sides of a boat). When I mirror a part in an assembly as descirbed above, I use the XZ plane and it comes into the assembly correctly. However if I insert the mirrored part in a different assembly if appears mirrored about the XY plane (I usually use Place at Component Origin, so where I clicked last shouldn't affect this). And if I open it up on its own in the Part modelling environment, it is mirrored about the XY plane. I've attached 2 parts to show this.

It's not a huge problem, but annoying, and if there's an easy fix or something I'm doing wrong....