Defining Technological Impacts of a Component on Its Environment

You can create impacts following the instantiation of a component, create and edit impacts of already instantiated components, and propagate impacts while adding new instances of components.

For a better view, multiselection of impacting elements is available using CTRL key. All selected impacting elements are highlighted.

This task shows you how to:

See Also
About Technological Impacts

Use Clash Detection

You can quickly compute impacts by detecting clashes between visible components.

Notes:
  • Assembly impacts cannot be created if linked to a representation that is not loaded in the context:
    • The line in Impact Result is disabled.
    • A message is displayed.
  • You can improve performances by deactivating Technological Results, either from the Preferences or from the context menu of the tree.

  1. From the Mold Design section of the action bar, click Components Impacts and select the impacting products containing Assembly Features.

    • Structured components, non-Tooling components and non-Tooling Assembly Features are supported.
    • Only impacted representations found under the UI Activated product are taken into account.
    • When required, select multiple occurrences of an impacting product before starting Impacts.

  2. Expand Options and select Preselect shapes impacted by clash detection.
    The number of impacting products and impact result are displayed. The impacts are computed from the automatic detection of clashes between visible elements.

Use Clash Detection with Additional Manual Edition

You can manually enhance the automatic clash detection described above.

  1. Start as described above.
  2. Expand Impacting Products to access the table for editing.
    The table lists the Assembly Features, one per line.
    • From left to right, each line is made of a check box, the name of the impacting product, the PLM type of the product, the name of the impacting element, and the type of impact.
    • By default, all the check boxes are selected.
      Important: There are two kinds of selection in the table:
      • By the check box
        • Only Assembly Features with their check box selected are taken into account to compute impacts.
        • Check boxes can be selected one by one, or all together from the header.
        • Impacted elements are displayed in their real colors. Only they are modified by impact computation.
        • A ghost display is applied to all nonimpacted elements.
        • To each Assembly Feature with a selected check box in Impacting Products corresponds an Assembly Impact with a selected check box in Impact Result.
        • When you clear a check box in Impacting Products, the corresponding check boxes are cleared in Impact Result.
      • By the pointer
        • When you select a line with the pointer (check box selected or not), the line turns blue in the dialog box, the elements of the line are highlighted in the 3D area, with the Assembly Feature shown in red. This is for inspection, not for computation.
          Tip: Multiselection by Ctrl or Shift keys is supported.
        • You can remove an impacting product from its context menu.
          Note: When deleting an impacting product, you must delete all associated Assembly Features.
  3. Select additional impacting products.

    Select Impacting Products is selected by default.

    • They are added to the table, with their Assembly Features.
    • Their check boxes are selected.
    • Corresponding Assembly Impacts are added to Impact Result, with their check boxes selected.
  4. Place the pointer over the name of an impacting product.
    The complete path is displayed.
  5. Select Select Impacted Representation check box and select representations to add.
    The Impact Result table is updated.
  6. Click the arrow in one column header to filter the impacting products respectively by name, PLM type, impacting element or type. The header expands.
    1. Either select the check box corresponding to your choice.
    2. Or enter a text (for example a prefix).

    The filter applies to all lines, with a selected or cleared check box.

    Only the result of the filtering is listed in Impacting Products.
  7. Expand Impact Result to access the table for editing.

    • This table lists possible Assembly Impacts, one per line.
    • From left to right, each line is made of a check box, the name of the impacted product, that of the impacted representation, the name of the impacting product and that of the impacting element.
    • Filtering, selection by check box or pointer works as described above.
    • Only Assembly Impacts with a selected check box are taken into account when computing impacts.

Use Only Manual Selection

You can skip the automatic detection of clashes and add impacted representations manually.

  1. From the Mold Design section of the action bar, click Components Impacts and select the impacting products containing Assembly Features.
  2. Make sure that Preselect shapes impacted by clash detection is cleared.
    Only the impacting products are listed. The Impact Result table is empty.
  3. Add impacted representations as explained above.

    You can select

    • A 3D Shape Representation from the 3D area.
    • A 3D Shape Representation, or a 3D Part, or a Product with one single representation.

  4. Filter, select by check box or pointer as explained above.

Define Clash Detection Options

You can control how the clash detection works.

  1. Expand Options.
    By default, Process also invisible representations is cleared. Clashes are detected only between visible elements.
  2. Select Process also invisible representations to extend the search for clashes to all hidden elements and the geometry of impacting products and impacted representations.

    This is useful for opening components with only Assembly Features definitions.

  3. From the list, select an option to apply ordered rules.
    • Skip Ordered Impact Rules
    • Apply Ordered Impact Rules to All
    • Apply Ordered Impact Rules for Fixing Components.
  4. Select the Create new Assemble at each computation check box to override the Preferences option Optimize grouping of Solid Impacts into Bodies.
    • When selected, creates an Assemble of Solid Impatcs at each impacts creation, independantly of the status of Optimize grouping of Solid Impacts into Bodies.

    • When cleared, takes the status of Optimize grouping of Solid Impacts into Bodies.

    Note: The status of Create new Assemble at each computation is saved

Assembly Impacts are created for all the selected check boxes of Impact Result.

Modified Impacted Representations are visible in the 3D area.

For Mold Tooling Design Only

You can activate and take advantage of the captured events (Only for components with Assembly Features), and delete impacts of created products.

  1. Select an option from the list.
    • No automatic preselection
    • Automatic preselection of created Products
    • Automatic preselection of created or moved Products
    • The status of this option is taken into account and remembered when you exit Components Impacts by OK or Cancel.
    • Any event associated with the new instantiation or replacement (or move) of an impacting Component is memorized during the current session, until it is used the next time you start Components Impacts.
    • The captured events feed the automatic preselection of impacting components the next time you start Components Impacts.
    • The option you have selected from the list is taken into account, provided you have not previously selected impacting components. Any occurrence of a component instance of the list that belongs to the UI active product structure is added to the selection of impacting products. Their impacts are computed.
  2. Proceed as explained above.
    • When you exit with OK, all the component instances for which an occurrence was taken into account are removed from the list, the events are seen as consumed.
    • When you exit with Cancel, the list of events is kept.
    • If you had entered Components Impacts with a manual preselection, the automatic selection occurs the next time you enter Components Impacts. However, if an occurrence of a component of the list is manually selected and its impact computed, the corresponding component instance is removed from the list and no longer proposed in the preselection.
    Notes:
    • When an automatic preselection is selected, the events are captured and stored in a list.
    • The events are removed from this list when their impact is computed
      • Either by Components Impacts
      • Or by the context Impact command
      • Or by the placement of a component with impact (The newly instantiated component is first added to the list, and immediately removed when applying the impact).
    • If a component was automatically preselected, but manually removed from Impact Result, the impact is not computed, the event is not consumed and is kept for a future use.
    • The list is persistent only within the session (not stored in the database). It is completely erased when you exit the session, or when you select No automatic preselection.
    • The list is partially erased when you go from Automatic preselection of created or moved Products to Automatic preselection of created Products.
    • Undo/redo is not supported in the list.
      • If an event was consumed by an impact that is undone, the event is not restored. The component is not proposed again for automatic preselection.
      • If an event was captured for a move operation, which is undone, the event remains in the list, the component can be proposed again for automatic preselection.
  3. If required, select Delete Impacts of selected products.

    Notes:
    • Existing impacts are deleted and new impacts computed in the current context of the design. This is not an update of the existing impact in the context where it was computed. This may lead to alteration of the design intent.
    • If the product is not up-to-date, the deletion fails. Cancel Components Impacts, update the product, restart Components Impacts.
    When a component with impacts is moved, several cases may occur depending on the other components it encounters in the Product context after the move:
    • The same Parts in clash lead to the same impacts. Update updates all the impacts to their correct geometry.
    • Some impacted parts are no longer in clash. Update makes the previous impacts ineffective but they remain in the model.
    • Some new parts are now in clash. Update does not add them.
    • The application of the ordered impact rules may keep the same parts in clash, but the condition changes and the type of impact needs to be changed, for example, a Cap screw is now going through the plate after a design change. Update only updates the previous impact type.
    • With the application of the ordered impact rules for Assembly features of type Pad and Pocket, the order of the objects in clash (following the Component axis) may change the object to be impacted by the Assembly feature.

    All these reasons require that the existing impacts are deleted before a new computation.

    Tip: Delete Impacts of selected products is particularly efficient when using an automatic preselection, as it makes the updates quicker.

    For every selected component (no matter how it was selected), existing impacts are deleted. New impacts are computed and displayed for every selected component. If you exit with Cancel, the deleted impacts are restored.