About Engineering Connection Definition

In a mechanical context such as the Assembly Design app, an engineering connection is composed of a set of constraints. The constraints relate components such as a product, a 3D part, or a 3D shape, in which a typed-relation is defined to account for a kinematics relation.

Engineering connections can be defined:

• On one component (Product or 3D Part).
• Between two components:
  • Product/Product,
  • Product/3D Part,
  • Product/3D Shape,
  • 3D Part/3D Part,
  • 3D Part/3D Shape.

    Important: The 3D Shape representation directly under the active product is always seen as fixed in an engineering connection. In this case, only the other component is repositioned during the update process.

• Between three components (any combination of Product and 3D Part).

The engineering connection orientation indicates that one component is repositioned relatively to the other component during the update process to comply with the engineering connection definition.

You can change the orientation of an engineering connection or leave it undefined.

Important: Only exact geometries are accounted for selectable geometric elements. If you try to select another type of geometry like polyhedral geometries, the selection is ignored and contextual commands are not available.

Engineering connections can be used in another context to manage feature connections between components.

Engineering connections are also involved for annotations, to relate to two components in the 3D Tolerancing & Annotation app to gather information.

In this case, a tab named FTA is created containing the annotations and its related geometric elements, and the Constraints tab can appear as empty, without constraints or defined orientation.

Important: When an engineering connection already exists between the two components, this one can gather both mechanical and FTA contexts.

Engineering connections are displayed in the tree. Constraints of engineering connections are also displayed in the tree.

To control the display of engineering connections constraints in the tree, select or clear the Display constraints of engineering connections in the Tree option in the General section of the Engineering Connections options.

For more information, see Engineering Connection.

The engineering connection display is defined as follows:

• Under the Engineering Connections node below the active product:
  • Names of affected products are displayed in the label.
  • Orientation of the engineering connection is identified by -> between product names.

    If no orientation is defined, product names are separated by a comma.

• Under the component that can be repositioned in an oriented engineering connection.

  The name of the connected component is displayed.

• Under both components, when an engineering connection has no orientation assigned.

  The name of the connected component is displayed.

Engineering connections can be displayed in the 3D area.

You can allow the display of the constraints of engineering connections in the 3D area by selecting/deselecting the Display in the 3D option in the General section of the Engineering Connections options.

For more information, see Engineering Connection.

Engineering connections appear in the 3D area when you hover over a constrained component in the tree or in the 3D area, or an engineering connection the tree.

The engineering connections associated with a component can be pasted when the option is defined.

When the following option is selected, and according to where you paste a component associated with engineering connections, the following operations are applied:

• Paste the component at the same level as the copied component.
• Paste the component at a higher level than the copied component. The pasted level cannot be higher than the first level under the active product.
• Paste the component at a lower level than the copied component.