Structured and Innovative Parts - when to use

[mgajewski]

What is the difference between structured and innovative parts?

 

I've read the Help topic on that but it gave me a headache.

 

I'd appreciate a short explanation that would be clear to the meanest intelligence : )

 

An example or two would be very helpful, too. Thanks.

[IronKevin]

Simply put, Structured Design mode is better for when you want everything to be constrained/mated together. This is typically helpful in a design where you know the design intent and exactly how you want the models to interact, such as a family of parts or a design that will change in a predetermined manner.

 

An example can be found in Help, Help Tutorials, "Structured Part Basic Overview".

[tlehnhaeuser]

Innovative Mode is modeling the way IronCAD has been all along with no constraints or order depenedencies forced upon you.

I feel this mode is the best and ideal for designers who do alot of custom design where constant changes are being done.

 

Structured Mode is the opposite. SM is a history-dependent modeling mode which mimics the way most Tradtional CAD modelers work. Basically the only time I see a need for SM is if your a compnay that designs basically the same products but with minor changes, then you can build the models to a structured feature tree and add constraints, parameters, etc.. So in theory you could potentially create a entire new 3D part/assembly which the editing of some parameters.

 

It should be also said that you can achieve basically the same level of parameters in IM as in SM if you simply turn off the "Auto-Rorder" tool.

 

In my opinion, not sure what the major benefits there are to SM.

[Cary OConnor]

Following from Tom's post, Structured parts do have some nice capabilities if you mix solids and surfaces (where booleans are applied). In the case of SP (Structured Parts), you can support multiple bodies in a single part then create a boolean feature. What this allows is that you can edit the solid or surface at a later point and the final solid body can be updated. This has the advantage over the IP in some cases if you know how to take advantage of it. Also as Tom stated, if you wanted several parts to have relations, you can achieve this with the Body concept and saving out as individual parts from the Body. It is a different mind set and you would need to think about your design a bit more if you want to use the SP approach.

 

Cary