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Feature driven component patterns and lightweight assemblies

I'm belatedly realising that lightweight assemblies are of virtually no use if you are editing the assembly as:- a) Equations don't work (and SWX unhelpfully just shows them with the standard "broken" red exclamation mark) b) Feature-driven component patterns don't work, and again, SWX gives the incredibly misleading impression that the driving feature is no longer present.

i.e. if you edit the pattern feature, the field for the driving feature is blank!! Surely it could at least be greyed out to indicate it's dependent on an unresolved component.

Anyway, these could be classified under the heading of "room for improvement". But one other shortcoming seems to me to be more like a bug. I frequently edit a lightweight assembly, only to realise that a pattern has not updated, so I then switch everything to be resolved. Still the component pattern will not update. The only way to force it do so is to edit the pattern feature (don't actually need to change anything) and then SWX wakes up and sorts itself out.

Does anyone else get the same behaviour? I'm on 2007sp5.

John H

Reply to
John H
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Yes, we see this same behavior here also. we have gon to not loading anything in lightweight on quite a few users. we turn off this in tools/options/system options/performance and turn off large assembly mode on assemblies. seems to help if you do notr load items in lightweight. we had mates that do not want to work in simple assembly in lightweight mode also. we were rotating assy (trunion like) and saw orings staying parallel to the top plane and still rotating with assy. mates were all resolved, this was another WTF item.

SolidWorks is listening, we can only hope that they feel this is important to fix or just get rid of, fix would be better as if it was removed there are other consequences. iQ

Reply to
iQ

Thanks for the confirmation. I suspect some of the mates problems with lightweight assemblies are due to mates to component origins, which (amazingly) are not loaded in lightweight.

I'm not so sure SWX is listening......

John H

Reply to
John H

What we have learned the hard way is that if you want to work with anything in an assembly that matters dont load it in lightweight. Mates equations configurations etc can swop around each time you rebuild its just amazing that function has actually gotten worse with time.

Reply to
Ronni

Ronni,

I'd probably go one further than that, and say it applies not just to bits you want to work with, but even areas of the assy or sub-assy where the design is complete and you do not want it to change.

John H

Reply to
John H

not listening, is why i am looking at other CAD programs. iQ

Reply to
iQ

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