Hi all, I work in a custom sheetmetal shop, and our designer just resigned. That being said, I need to modify a part but I want to keep all assembly relations and constraints. I have done this before, but I had someone walk me thru it. now he's gone. I just don't want to have to reinvent the wheel when modifing the other assembly would be faster. the only difference between what I have and what I need is lenght, everything else is the same. Any help would be great.
You can change geometry and everything should remain intact. What will cause you problems, is deleting or adding geometry. What I recommend, is, make a copy of the part somewhere and save it so you can get back. Then, open the assembly. Set everything lightweight to resolved. Double click on the geometry you want to make longer, find the dimension and change it. Press Ctrl-Q. If the assembly rebuilds the way you want, you are done.
Hello Chad,
Welcome to the forum. It may be difficult to give good advice without more information, but I'll try to help. Assuming you will want to keep the original file, I'd recommend opening the assembly and going to File > Pack and Go. This procedure copies the assembly (or drawing) to a new folder with all it's referenced parts, sub-assemblies, etc. You can also re-name files as part of this process, which I'd recommend, especially for the parts you'll be editing. Even if you don't necessarily need to keep the original assembly it might be a good idea to do this so you'll have a backup in case your editing doesn't go well.
After doing the Pack and Go, close the original file and open the new one. Now you can find the part you need to edit in the tree or graphics area and click on it. If your edits involve linking to other assembly components, then choose the "Edit Part" icon. That will let you edit the part inside the assembly, referencing other parts as needed. You can also edit the part here without any external references, but in this case I usually would choose the "Open Part" icon to open the separate part file and do the edits there.
I hope this helped, but I know it's very general information, so if you need more specific help please reply back with specific questions.
This is a loaded question because there are a ton of things that can affect this.
I suggest backups first!
Try opening up the assembly, then open the part. Try changing the part as needed and see what happens to the assembly. Don't save the part yet at this point! Don't save anything yet till you're sure.
Try running through any configurations if they exist to double check that. Do a Cntrl-Q on the assembly. If the tree blows up and you have a bunch of errors, just close down both the assembly and part WITHOUT SAVING. If all goes well and everything works great then you're good.
If it's messed up like that, you've probably got a bit of work ahead of you. We would need much more info to help.
Good luck!
Edit: LOL by the time I typed this out, others said the same thing!
Thanks for all the help. pack and go worked perfectly.
Open the part, edit the sketch that controls the length, save and close. The part will update inside the assembly to the new dimension. Depending on how it was mated, it should update error free. Not being able to see how it was all done makes it difficult to say for sure.