Toggle Derived Sheet Metal Option 'Link Sheet Metal Style'

[andrewdroth]

I've used Make Components to create hundreds of derived sheet metal parts and I have already Constrained duplicates and set up all of the assemblies and sub assemblies. 

I just realized that I didn't have the Link Sheet Metal Styles option selected when making those parts. Is there a way to access that via iLogic?

Ideally I would run some code on the top level assembly to filter through all the sheet metal components and toggle that on. I can't find any snippets relating to that setting. Is it accessible?

[A.Acheson]

Hi @andrewdroth 

Have you got an image of where that toggle is located? Is it within the derive dialogue box? If so you may need to derive again with that switched on. I haven't used its functionality so not sure if it is exposed but most options are. 

[A.Acheson]

I had a quick k look through the API help and don't see much there for that option. 

See link here of the process.

I came across a post from 2018 saying that option wasn't there. I suspect nothing has changed since. Can you post an image of the results? Does it link parameters etc? You may need to replicate its function if it isn't exposed in the API. 

Here is a link to the post in the idea station. Needs a vote up only on 20

[andrewdroth]

Thanks @A.Acheson,

Here's what the option looks like when you go to edit the derived part.

I voted for that idea.

At this point because all of my assemblies are set up using these parts, it would be too late to remake the parts. My only option is to open all the parts, edit the derived part feature, and check that box. 

[A.Acheson]

If you know what the results of ticking that box is you can still likely replicate most of the results by code. You just won't have the box ticked. If these are one off's that might be a good option but if you are going to be doing lots of changes with them then that might become annoying later on down the road. 

[grahov]

Hi. Did you manage to find a solution? I faced a similar task in my project.

[WCrihfield]

Just dropping a few more links in here to the 2024 online help documentation for a few of the API objects that can be involved.

DerivedPartDefinition (the base type)

DerivedPartUniformScaleDef (a Type derived from that base Type)

DerivedPartCoordinateSystemDef (a Type derived from that base Type)

DerivedPartTransformDef (a Type derived from that base Type)

When we review the methods and properties available to these object types that may be used when deriving a part into another document, we can see that there are two properties exposing control over linking face color from source, and sketch formatting from source, but not a property exposing control over linking a sheet metal style.  Since sheet metal is a document sub type of a part document, there may need to be an additional derived type of derived part definition that is more specifically for sheet metal parts.  It may not be a viable solution to just add an extra property to any of those existing types, because not all parts are sheet metal parts.  But I suppose they could just ignore that property when the source part is not a sheet metal part.  I do not know that scenario is currently being handled behind the scenes, but I also have not seen anything exposed in the Inventor API specifically for this yet.