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Should a part with a lot of bodies be a sub assembly?

Question asked by Ben Shaw on Jun 7, 2009
Latest reply on Jun 8, 2009 by Ben Shaw

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I am modeling an acoustic guitar and i have the top, sides, and back as separate parts in the assembly - but the fretboard is a part that contains all of the frets (20) bodies in one part.

If i hide the fretboard that contains all the frets as bodies i can work on the assembly.
but if i try to work on the frets everything comes to a stand still.

Should the frets each be their own separate parts? Or a sub assembly?

Thanks

Im willing to try and attach the file if anyone wants to have a look

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Dwight Livingston Jun 7, 2009 12:00 PM
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Benjamin

I've never seen the body count of a part by itself drag down an assembly.

If the frets contain a lot of complex faces, then it wouldn't make much difference how they come into the assembly. Are they complex. though? I would have assumed that your frets are simple rectangular blocks, and with only twenty or so I wouldn't think they add much geometry.

If you were suppressing rather than hiding the fret part, I would suspect an awkward arrangement of mates, but that's not the case.

If you post the parts, I'll take a look. You also might want to list the specs for your PC in your signature, so others might spot a problem there.
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- Ben Shaw @ Dwight Livingston on Jun 7, 2009 3:25 PM
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  Dwight Livingston wrote:
  
  If you post the parts, I'll take a look. You also might want to list the specs for your PC in your signature, so others might spot a problem there.
  
  Here is that file.. and ill work on getting my specs up... i will say that my pc has an nvidia 8800 card in it and recently when i open sw it say that because of a recent configuration change it is now using software gl and i cant change it back to hardware.
  
  [URL=http://img4.imageshack.us/i/nonamerli.jpg/] [/URL] [URL=http://g.imageshack.us/img4/nonamerli.jpg/1/] [/URL]
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  - guitar1.zip2.2 MB
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  - Dwight Livingston @ Ben Shaw on Jun 7, 2009 4:06 PM
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    Benjamin
    
    I'm looking at your assembly on my home PC and it's not slowing down. The specs on this are . . .
    
    SW2009 sp1.0
    Dell Dimension 8400 P4 3.2 GHz
    2 GB ram
    ATI Radion
    
    Not much, in other words. Your guitar model is looking good, but I can't say why you're having trouble.
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    - Ben Shaw @ Dwight Livingston on Jun 7, 2009 4:16 PM
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      Dwight Livingston wrote:
      
      Benjamin
      
      I'm looking at your assembly on my home PC and it's not slowing down.
      
      Not much, in other words. Your guitar model is looking good, but I can't say why you're having trouble.
      
      Hmmm... i was hoping there was an issue with the way i have my assembly set up.
      But thanks a lot for looking.
      
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      - Anna Wood @ Ben Shaw on Jun 8, 2009 2:41 AM
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        When changing your SW options back to using hardware OpenGL, make sure that you have SW launched, but do not have any files open.
        
        Cheers,
        
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        Ben Shaw @ Anna Wood on Jun 8, 2009 4:34 AM
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        Anna Wood wrote:
        
        When changing your SW options back to using hardware OpenGL, make sure that you have SW launched, but do not have any files open.
        
        Cheers,
        
        thanks for the reply -- but i know i should not have a part open and it still wont let me change the setting.
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Roy Potter Jun 8, 2009 9:07 AM
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Should the frets each be their own separate parts? Or a sub assembly?

purists would say they should be a separate part. They are a different material and can be added/removed from the fret board as individual parts. It all depends on your personal circumstances and why you are modelling the parts. I modelled a guitar and just created the whole thing in one file - it was for representational purposes only.

(If you search the forums you will find inforamation on multi-body v's assembly).
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1-9C36HC Jun 8, 2009 2:14 PM
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benjamin,

I would say that the rule-of-thumb with Multi-body part is to build it with manufacturing in mind. That is, build multi-bodies for anything that will eventually be manufactured as a separate part. In the case of the frets, looks like they are all unique? If so, a nice way to handle them is to build the fret as a separate part and then use configurations to all the variations of it - because it looks simple enough to where you could probably do this.

BTW, I had trouble opening your zip arhive - Am I the only one?
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Charles Culp Jun 8, 2009 2:52 PM
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Also corrupt for me.

And in general, I do not think it is always necessary to merge solid bodies. There is typically no real benefit as far as SolidWorks functionality is concerned. Sometimes it makes rebuilds faster, sometimes slower, depends on the features after the merging of the bodies and why you merged them. I agree with Mark's statements that manufacturing intent is more important than anything else.
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Ben Shaw Jun 8, 2009 2:54 PM
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Im just using SW to design this acoustic guitar and then i am building it by hand. I dont know how i would make the frets have a configuration for each one as this is a mulit - scale guitar and each fret is at a different angle and has its own radius tied to the changing radius of the fret board. Im just concerned that this might happen to me in the future when im working on a file for a client.

I just opened up this file at work where i have a set up made to run SW and it still chokes when i do anything with the fret board.
I might upload another zip to try.

Thanks for the help...
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- guitar2.zip8.3 MB
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Ben Shaw Jun 8, 2009 3:39 PM
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I have attached a new file to my previous post.

thanks
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Should a part with a lot of bodies be a sub assembly?

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