Joel Parrish

Chris, I was able to do that but that not exactly what I wanted to do... I wanted several parts be able to be copied with their orientation relevant to the curve... It's not a problem, I've gotten by with out being able to copy that way, just thought it would be a time saver... IronKevin has submitted as an enhancement request... Joel Parrish www.pai-design.com

Question? Is it possible to copy parts along a 3d curve or a part swept from a 3d curve? If so, how? I've tried constraints. But since I hardly use constraints, I have little understanding of how to properly them. TIA Joel Parrish www.pai-design.com

Rick, My suggestion would be to take some time and create some screw & fastener catalogs with all the screws & fasteners in the configurations that you commonly use... and just drag and drop... the screw tool is too slow and in some instances isn't exactly to spec... Plus if you take your time at creating the parts for catalogs, you could have all your information filled out for you bill of materials. Invest some time now, save time later... That is if you have the time... Joel Parrish www.pai-design.com

I remember there being talk about an Autosave plugin that someone was working on. I'm usually pretty good at clicking that save button. But not 30 minutes ago I lost about 6 hours of work. So right about now I wouldn't mind the periodic interruption of an autosave. My harddrive & processor are plenty fast to handle periodic saves. Once an hour would be good enough. Gotta get up and stretch anyway. And so what if you can't undo, it's saved. So if anyone out there has got this autosave beast tackled lemme know, I'd like to give it a shot. Joel Parrish www.pai-design.com

John & everyone else. I've got a partial solution for your consistant type-copy-paste. We all have done enough of it! I have started using an extended clipboard, like Yankee Clipper. There are many out there with multi hot key pastes and all that. Great tool, for filling in things like title blocks, material callouts, etc. that are full of common information. 2 cents on input devices - I used a MS Explorer 5 button trackball for about 2 years, great trackball! But my index and middle fingers just recently started feeling uncomfortable from rolling the ball all the time. So to give those fingers a break, I've switched to a MS Intellemouse Explorer 5 button mouse. I am under the impression that switching up your input device exercises your hand and may aid in preventing CTS. There are many input devices out there, like gyro mice. The input device is up to you and what you feel is comfortable. Joel Parrish www.pai-design.com

I've been investigating this oddity, and I think that it comes from using configurations. With this model, I have a process that is a walking beam type application. It has 4 basic positions. So in design I have 4 configurations plus a couple more (home, move1, move2, ect). I have the configuratiosn set so I can easily switch and check interferences, ect. I had been working in the home config (not default) for sometime. And was actually in the home configuration when I had exported my assemblies. Well, from observation, when one saves out an assembly it saves it out in the default configuration, not the current configuration. This makes sense to me. I rarely use configurations, so I hadn't really run into this problem. Thinking back on it, I have seen this before with another model that I used configurations. So FYI, if you are using configurations, use default as your "default" (ie home). And be in the default config when you export your parts & assemblies. And there shouldn't be any surprises like parts mysteriously changing position & orientation. Joel Parrish www.pai-design.com

Just curious if anyone has experienced parts changing their postion after saving out an assembly??? This is the first whole machine that we have designed using IC 5.0 SP2. I have a model of about 300 parts divided into 6 assemblies. I saved out each of the assemblies into their own directory, as I always have done. Of those 6 assemblies atleast 1 part in 2 of the assemblies changed it's position. #1 - I find this disturbing. #2 - I now do not trust the location of any of my parts. Has anyone else had any expereinces like this? Thanks,