Replace part (suggestion that can save a lot of time!)

[yuval_rakavy]

"errare humanum est" (making errors is human)...

You create a print of multiple parts, and you find out that you have made a mistake on one of the parts. It would be a great time saver if I would be able to "replace" the part. In most cases the fixed part is more or less in the same size as of the part it is replacing.

 The current workflow is that I have to remove all instances of the old part

 Import the new part

 Reorient, duplicate and position it in the same position as of the old parts.

 A lot of work...

 It would be a much simpler if I can right click on a part and choose "Replace part...". I would be presented with the same exact dialog that I get when adding a part. If there are multiple duplicates of the part I would be promoted whether to replace this single instance or all duplicates. The new part will replace the old part, positioned in the same location and oriented the same as the old part. 

 Huge time saver.

 Hope to see this implemented soon (or even better, if I this option is already available and I missed it...)

 Yuval

[steffen_anders_adsk · Accepted solution]

Hello, @yuval_rakavy,

Welcome to the Netfabb forum, and thank you for the suggestion!

This function sort of exists already. Instead of replacing a part outright, what you'd do in Netfabb is load the new part, use the Align function, and then remove the old part. In particular, use Align stacked (tooltip: "Auto-align to other part's axes"). This stacks two parts on top of each other, according to their axes’ orientation and center of gravity.

To learn more about aligning, read https://help.autodesk.com/view/NETF/2021/ENU/?guid=GUID-49E9EF75-9D9A-465C-B65B-02EBB0672C7D in the online help.

Best regards,

Steffen

[Anonymous]

Resurrecting an old thread, but I would also love to see this feature implemented, as the "align" menu isn't the efficient solution here. There are many time when I have a box of say 100 irregularly shaped stl files and I've manually nested them together to save space in our job box, and each of these parts is labelled with the job box number. When I go to print this box again I need to change the label on every single one of these boxes. Since there isn't a "change label" option in Netfabb this means going back to the original file, updating the label, creating 100 duplicates, and manually nesting all of these parts together again.

It seems like creating a "replace" function would be super easy, and it would save lots of time at my job. Ideally, I create the new labelled part and export it as an stl. I click on my old part in Netfabb, click on a "replace" option. It then it imports the new STL file, adds the positional data from the old part, and deletes the old part. Even just this would save me bucketloads of time, but implementing a batch function to do this would be fantastic.

I know that rotational data isn't stored in the file history, but even if I needed to create a new labelled part for each orientation of my nested parts it would still save a lot of time. It seems like positional data is already saved for each part when STLs are exported, so why can't this positional data be applied to a new part?

Since Netfabb imports models instead of just storing a pointer to their file location there is also no way I am currently aware of for updating the stl file after it is imported. Being able to update an STL file and be given the option to update every model which is duplicated from the initial file would also be great, but this seems substantially harder to implement, as Netfabb's file history would need to be overhauled. 

If anyone is aware of a workaround for this that I'm not thinking of that would also solve this issue please let me know.

[steffen_anders_adsk]

Hello, @Anonymous,

Thank you for adding your thoughts.

It's not quite as easy as it perhaps may look. After labeling in Netfabb, especially list labeling that generates part clones with running numbers, parts are completely new entities with no connection to the original, and any such connection would need to be regenerated artificially (and costly) if you wanted to have any sort of bidirectional solution like I understand you to be wanting to have implemented. Especially for STL where any "positional data for each part" is more like "positional data for every individual triangle in a dumb list of triangles that, when placed per their positional data, may or may not conceivably form some human-recognisable shape, even replicate a useful part". So, for this to have any chance of entering development, it's more useful to know what you actually need, otherwise such a Replace button would be a highly specific tool that would be costly to implement while only those with this very specific requirement would use it.

Can you confirm that what you actually need is the ability to have

1. reproducible and repeatable, 
2. known,
3. custom (eg. after packing) arrangement of
4. otherwise identical parts (= clones),
5. meshes,
6. even after multiple label updates?

Kind regards,

Steffen

[Anonymous]

I personally would only ever be "replacing" a part with a nearly identical part, so if it's possible to import a new part at the same "origin point" that would work just fine for me. Even if it isn't super exact it would save me literal hours on some job boxes. I was thinking about it having similar functionality to the way the "label" function currently works: After adding a label, Netfabb asks if I want to remove the old part and then places the new part in the same location the old part was in.

It seems like this placement for many parts would be difficult to implement from what you're telling me, but alternatively some sort of history-based labelling would be amazing, and may be easier to implement? If it was possible to update a label after it has been applied to a part file that alone would also be quite useful, but what would really save time would be the ability to update the label on all of my part files through some sort of batch edit.

For more specifics on my workflow: There are many times I have a created a job box to be sent to our sand printers with several hundred identical parts that all have the same label (I have the job box number etched into each part using Netfabb's text labelling.) To do this I either copy and paste, or duplicate my original part file after applying my label in Netfabb. For really boxy parts where the duplicate feature nests the parts nicely I can just re-import the original mesh, apply a new label to it, and duplicate it however many times it needs to be duplicated. However, most of our job boxes require I do some of the placement of our parts manually, either to nest multiple complex shapes together or to place test bars and such. In this case I am stuck having to replace 100 or more parts in fairly specific locations just to update the label on them. 

The other time this becomes relevant is when small changes need to be made to our part files. The engineering team reducing some aspect of our part files by several millimeters means re-importing them into Netfabb and having to manually place them into a job box again in order to put them in the same place they used to be in. If it was possible to just replace the old part files with a new version of them in the same location this would never need to be done manually.

If there is some already-implemented feature which would provide a workaround for this that I am currently unaware of I would be happy to try it as well. It feels like the type of thing that has an easier solution I'm just missing.

[Anonymous]

Here is a related thread: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/netfabb-forum/how-to-label-300-parts/td-p/8127477