Controlling Parts

Contents

• Parent and Child Relations
  

  Features are normally built upon other existing features. For example, you create a base extrude feature and then create additional features such as a boss or cut extrude. The original base extrude is the parent feature; the boss or cut extrude is a child feature. The existence of a child feature depends on the parent.

• Parent/Child Relationships Dialog Box
  

  You can display the parents and children of a selected feature, sketch, axis, plane, curve, or surface.

• Dependency Editing
  

  You can suppress a feature so you can work on the model with the selected feature temporarily removed from the model. Suppressing a feature not only removes it from the display, but also from any calculations in which it may be involved.

• Suppress and Unsuppress Features
  

  When you suppress a feature, it is removed from the model (but not deleted). The feature disappears from the model view and is shown in gray in the FeatureManager design tree. If the feature has child features, the child features are also suppressed.

• Derived Parts
  

  You can create a new part directly from an existing part. The new part, called a derived part, has the original part as its first feature. By default, the derived part is linked to the original part by means of an external reference. This means that any changes you make to the original part are reflected in the derived part.

• Splitting Parts and Saving Bodies
  

  You can use Split to divide a part into multiple bodies. You can keep the bodies within the part or save them into separate part files. You can save them during the creation of the Split feature, or use Save Bodies to save them after the split is complete.

• File Management with External References
  

• Feature Statistics
  

  Feature Statistics is a tool that displays the amount of time it takes to rebuild each feature in a part. Use this tool to reduce rebuild time by suppressing features that take a long time to rebuild. This tool is available in all part documents.

• Checking Model Geometry
  

  By default, each time you add or modify a feature, the feature is checked against any adjacent faces and edges. Additional tools for checking models are the Verification on rebuild option and the Check Entity tool.

• Check Entity
  

  The Check Entity dialog box enables you to check model geometry and identify undesirable geometry.

• Displaying Entity Properties
  

  The Entity Property dialog box displays the names of faces, surfaces, bodies, or edges.

• Named Entities
  

• Choose Option
  

  The Choose Option dialog box appears when you select several entities on a model and press Delete. The dialog box is dynamic, with the appropriate selections available depending on what entities you select on the model.