Flipping mates!

I wish they'd take that capability completely out and put it back the way it was in 2006. Having SW decide which mates to flip is just asking for trouble and has caused many headaches and lots of extra reworking because of it. And to think the answer I got from SW was that people actually wanted SW to flip the mates that were going to overdefine the other mates. What a bunch of horse$H!T

Well you know, in simple cases it works ok. When I first saw it, I had to flip a bolt. So I did the first mate, expecting then to do the second one, but it did it for me. Cool, I thought, that's kind of handy. But then the program took on a life of its own and started flipping 20 or 30 mates at times. That's when you want to put a stop to it. At least this way it appears that you can stop it if you wish.

WT

And it may work if you don't have any in context relations but when it started flipping mates and sketches got reversed and the undo wouldn't work then I started screamin. I hope that it can be set to NEVER flip mates unless I tell it to flip them.

"Last night SP 5.0 came out as EV. "

I assume this is for SW2007. WHere do I find the download for it?

Thanks Monty

Yes, 2007 - you have to be signed up for EV program to get it. But even if you haven't, it's usually only about a week until the full release happens.

WT

Finally!! Followed by a few dozen ?????? I got very vocal about this issue in Beta for 2007. This was an application killer as far as I was concerned and I made it clear that we COULD NOT USE SWX 2007 unless this was corrected.

Caveat - when I have done 2007 assemblies in the second and third quarter of this year, (which are few because most of our clients are just starting to migrate) it wasn't nearly as awful or evident as it was in Beta

Here's the root principle that needs to be understood by our software vendor: What kind of hubris does it take to assume that 20 perfectly good mates that I, the DESIGNER, have ALREADY APPROVED should be redone by software that can't possibly know my intent just to make sure the 21st mate works (when I could simply flip the alignment of the 21st mate and everything would be hunky-dory)? To be honest, I am suprised it took this long for it to be corrected. Thanks - very much- for the heads up.

Ed

Ed,

I was really bothered by this FUNK-tionality at first till I learned how to avoid it. Still, it is like tap dancing in a mine field. Once you use it, it doesn't go away without a save, and restart of SWX AFAIK.

Initially I discovered this FUNK-tionality while doing training and got egg on my face. I couldn't believe what SWX was doing to, as you said, pre approved mates. Inquiries to my VAR led to a simple demo they produced. However, they could not answer any in depth or howto type questions. They left me hanging through no fault of there own. They didn't know either.

TOP

PS I think I coined a new word. FUNK-tionality.

Is this functionality in addition to the prompt you already sometimes get when you add a mate, asking whether you want to force it to solve for the new mate?

In general, I agree strongly with the other posts, in that there is no way the software should be flipping mates of its own accord.

Rather than coming up with functionality to second-guess the designer's intent, they should be giving us the tools to properly diagnose any issues in the constraint network e.g. the SolidMap type functionality. It is just too damn difficult at present to see clearly what is related to what - the graphical representation in I-DEAS was waaaayyyy better than the Feature Manager representation in SWX.

John H

Yes, this is in addition to the one you are thinking of. That one tells you that you are going to cause a problem with a new mate you are adding, and that functionality seems to work properly. The activity in question is when you are editing an existing mate and it would "take care of you" for good! Kind of like a mob hit - it makes you forget about the little irritations in life.

As a related note, I see in the fixed SPR list for 2007 SP5 this item. "When adding a mate in an assembly between a fully defined component and an under defined component the fully defined component moves" I'm sure this is all the same matter - good to see it finally fixed.

WT

I have now tried the variety of SPR issues I have turned in related to parts flipping and they all seem to work properly. It may be a cloudy day outside, but it's certainly a bright SW day! I think this is one of the most important fixes I have seen in years.

WT

I think we should vote to send the person or persons responsible for this FUBARed "FUNK-tionality" swimming across the Boston harbor with concrete flippers on with 10 minutes of air in the air tank. Maybe they'd thing twice before doing something like this again.

Thanks for the info. I have been waiting for this as well. I wasn't going to mess with another sp (still on 2007;sp3.0) until I knew this had been dealt with.

jk

variety of SPR issues I have turned in related to

Yipee! This "feature" has been causing me headaches ever since we installed 2007. My entire assembly (200 parts) would get flipped around when simply changing the distance mate on a small part with only 3 mates to one other part.

Anyone know if this has been implemented in 2008 SP0? I tried it in EV1 and it still had the issue.