How Assembly Experience Works with Assembly Definition

Assembly Experience is based on a Production System modeler and Assembly Definition is based on a Process modeler. This ensures compatibility with other DELMIA Manufacturing Planning apps for manufactured item, system, and resource definition.

In small and medium businesses, product structure definition, manufacturing assembly definitions, and assembly validation are often done by the same user.

Assembly Experience enables a nonmanufacturing user to create and manage manufacturing objects and verify assembly feasibility with a more life-like user experience. Assembly Experience is used for generating collision free assembly tracks, and Assembly Definition is used for generating the manufacturing assembly structures.

However, Assembly Experience is based on a Production System modeler and Assembly Definition is based on a Process modeler. Objects such as manufactured items and operations are generated automatically. This also ensures compatibility with other DELMIA Manufacturing Planning apps for manufactured item, system, and resource definition.

No expert knowledge is required for using these authoring tools. The end user can create and manage manufacturing assemblies by interacting directly with 3D objects. The end user can also create assembly tracks with collision detection by moving the selected objects in the 3D view.

The objects described in Assembly Definition are manufacturing parts and assemblies. No definition of flows is described. The only objects visible in Assembly Experience are tracks.

This section describes the objects can be manipulated in Assembly Experience.

The following objects are handled:

• A manufacturing assembly, which is a set of manufactured parts resulting from a manufacturing assembly.
• A manufactured part, which is a part to be assembled.
• A track, which is a mount/unmount path applied on a manufactured part or manufacturing assembly to assemble/disassemble it.
• An operation, which is the object that holds the track.

The first time Assembly Experience is activated, a System is automatically created for each manufacturing assembly, and they are linked together by a scope link.

Then operations with their representations are created each time a track is defined. The implement link is created between the operation and the moved manufactured part or manufacturing assembly.

Time constraints are created between operations to store the sequence of tracks. Time constraints between operations exist only between operations of a common System.

When a manufactured part or manufacturing assembly with a linked operation is moved, a new instance is created, and the previous instance is removed. This means that the link to the operation is lost. From the user point of view, the created track is lost for the moved part or assembly.

This correspondence between manufactured part or manufacturing assembly and operation on one hand and between manufacturing assembly and System on the other is kept. This ensures consistency.

To ensure compatibility between all DELMIA Manufacturing Planning apps, modifications done in an upstream app are taken into account in a downstream app.

This is achieved by synchronizing modifications done in Assembly Definition and Assembly Experience. This synchronization happens automatically.