In a previous video, I showed you how to create a
Publish Geometry feature, and in this video I'm going to show you how to create a Copy
Geometry feature. So first off, in my transmission assembly, I'm going to
create a new component. I'll click on the Create command in the ribbon. The
type is set to Part. I'll go ahead and enter in the number that I want to use
for this next component. Click OK. I'm using my standard start part. For
locating this component I'm just going to use the Default constraint. I can
access that from the right mouse button menu. I hit the check mark, or middle
mouse button, and my component is placed in the model. I'm going to click on it
and choose Activate so I can create the Copy Geometry feature inside of it.
Then from the ribbon, click on Copy Geometry. First off, in the upper left
hand corner of the dashboard, I can choose the Context, either Assembly or
External. The difference between the two is that if I leave the default Assembly,
then this Copy Geometry feature is going to have a reference path up to the
top-level assembly in which it was created.
If I choose External, the Copy Geometry feature reference path is just
going to be between the target part and the source part. That's why I
prefer to use External because it minimizes external references. Then I'll
click the Open button so that I can select the component that I want to
reference. Since I use the context type of External, I've got to locate the
Copy Geometry feature in my target model, and that's why I have this Placement
dialog box that comes up. I've generally found that almost all the time
you can use the placement method of Default, but if for some reason you
needed to locate explicitly where that Copy Geometry feature should be located
in the target part, you could use a coordinate system to do that. So I will
click OK and I'm going to open up the References
tab. I have a config.pro option set so that I can automatically start
picking geometry from the model that I want to reference. Surfaces, edge chains,
and datum features. But I'm going to use this button on the dashboard to specify
that I want to pick a Published Geometry feature, and you get an accessory window
that opens up. You might be able to select the Published Geometry feature
in that window. Also you get a split Model Tree that shows the target
component. You could scroll down and here I have located that Published
Geometry feature that I made before. I can click on it and we can see that it
is listed in here. A couple other things to show you. From the Options tab, here I
have the ability to specify when this should update. This is called Update
Control, and the default is Automatic. In other words, whenever I regenerate, it's
going to update the Copy Geometry feature. If you don't want it to change,
you could set it to Manual Update, and we have this option here to provide a
notification. Or if you don't want to have any kind of update, you could choose
No Dependency. Be aware that No Dependency is pretty much a one-way trip. It used
to be always a one-way trip, once you set it to No Dependency, you couldn't go back.
It's giving me this warning over here. But be aware, there is a hidden config.pro option that allows you to re-establish dependency. PTC doesn't make
a big amount of noise over this, but you actually do have that ability. Alright,
now to the Properties tab. I highly recommend that you rename your Copy
Geometry features. I like to call them "ECG" for External Copy Geometry or just
"CG" for Copy Geometry, and then the name or number of the part that you're
referencing. This can be a help later on for debugging, or
if somehow you lose some references. After I've changed the name, I can hit
the checkmark. If I go down to this part and expand it in the Model Tree, you
can see that it has the Copy Geometry feature in there. Now I can open it
up in its own separate window. You can see the geometry that has been
copied over, including some datums. Remember that a Copy Geometry feature
can reference one component and one component only. If I want to grab
additional references from another part, I have to create a second Copy Geometry
feature. Again, I'm going to go back to my part. I'm going to activate it. By the
way, I hid the previous Copy Geometry so that the references won't clutter up my
Graphics Area. For creating my new Copy Geometry feature, I'll click the
button. This time I'm going to leave it as Assembly context, just to show you
that difference. Now I'll go to the References tab over here. Then I can
select these surfaces that I want, and be aware that you can right mouse click and
hold, and from the pop-up menu, if you choose Solid Surfaces, that's a quick way
of grabbing all the different surfaces from a part. Just like when we created
the Published Geometry feature, there's a Details button that allows you to create
different surface sets if you need to. I can click in the
collector in order to select any edges that I want. Maybe I want to make sure
that I explicitly grab a couple of the ones for the hole over here. Maybe I'm
going to need them later on. You can also select any references
from the model, like Datum Planes, Axes, Points, and Coordinate Systems. Again,
you could click in the collector in order to activate it, or you can right
mouse click and hold, and choose References so that it activates the
collector. I'll turn on my Datum Plane visibility. It looks like
I can't access the planes because they're hidden on a layer. No problem,
I have my Layers command in my Quick Access Toolbar at the top of the screen.
I can use the Pick icon to activate the part, and then let's show any of
the different references in here. I can close the Layer tool, turn on my Axis
display, and then pick the references that I need. For example, I could grab
an axis over here, an axis over there. If I had any Annotations, I could click on
the Edit button and select those. Again from the Options tab, you have
the Update Control, but since I am selecting geometry, we have surface
copying options like "Copy all surfaces as is," or you could use the option to
"Exclude surfaces and fill holes," or "Copy inside a boundary." This is very
similar to what you have in the Copy and Paste commands. For the
Properties tab, I'll type in "CG" and I forgot the name of the part. It is 51-103. Hhit the Enter key. Now I can hit the
check mark, and and I will open up the part in its own separate window. You
can see that I have the first Copy Geometry feature hidden, and you can see
that all the geometry that I brought in from the second copy geometry feature.
Let me show the first one and now I've got the different references I need so I
can begin designing my part.
