Zolko wrote: ↑Sat Jan 05, 2019 11:19 am
I think that the name for the container is badly chosen: an "Assembly" in A3 can be an assembly but also other things, much broader. How about changing the name to avoid confusion ? For example "Model" ?
Model? I use the word modeling for geometry modeling. But hey, I don't have a mechanic engineering background. When I choose the name, I was thinking that Assembly (or Product) and Part are really the same thing, since the name Part is taken already, so I choose "Assembly", which also echo's the name of the workbench. I also thought at that time that this "Assembly" and "Part" dualism is a common sense among mechanical folks, no?
Also: why is there a need for a group — or whatever it is — called "Parts" to hold the included parts ? Could those not be included directly at the root of the container ? That would simplify the workflow and avoid further confusion.
In the beginning, I also wanted to eliminate the "Parts" group to reduce one tree hierarchy for every assembly. But now I feel lucky I didn't do it, because I can now add optional functions as extra groups without affecting the part list. There is already an initially hidden
relation group. In the future, there may be other groups for things like simplified part shapes, collision shapes, and so on.
Another thing, A3 assembly container can be frozen, and the "Parts" group will store a compound shape of all sub-assembly, such that further changes in the sub-assembly will not affect this assembly. And if those sub-assembly are in external files, they will not be loaded, which allows A3 to handle potentially large assembly.