Assembly view and main element face

[abudayev]

Hi all, 

I am writing an plugin to dimension inserts (family instances) inside an assembly, so far I've managed to create an assembly with all the inserts and create all views and place them on a sheet. Now I want to dimension inserts on each view (only inserts that are on the face relative to the view). Do assembly views have (i.e. ElevationFront, ElevationRight and so on) have a property that relates to a relative face of the main element (in my case it's a column)? So basically I want to check if the reference face of inserts is the same the of reference face of the assembly view and then to dimension them. Or is there another way? thank you for support

[abudayev]

@Anonymous could you please give me a hint on my issue?

[RPTHOMAS108 · Accepted solution]

I don't believe there is such a property linking the view to the face.

If the column in the assembly was originally orientated to the project system when the assembly was made then you can match face normal of the column against view direction of the view (assuming column has planar face). From the assembly view you can get the associated assembly instance. From your description I assume the column orientation is perpendicular or parallel to view direction of each view so you should be able to match by view direction.

Initially when you create the assembly views they are parallel to project co-ord system but if you pick a rotated assembly instance and acquire the views you'll find the view names remain the same but the views are no longer directed in the project space sense of front/back/left/right. Under these circumstances such labels become meaningless but the view direction will match the orientation of the rotated assembly used to acquire the views (so there is that link still).

If the column was originally incorporated into the assembly not aligned with the project system then the above approach can't be used.