I am modeling a complex window dynamic component. Within it are nested several other dynamic components, each relying on the axes for orientation. I just received instructions to make the component a cutting component so it can cut through walls. However, the way I constructed it means that the X and Z axes are where the cutting plane should be as opposed to the XY plane. Is there any way to change the axes without messing up all of the internal attributes?
@pcmoor might have some ideas but since all or at least most of the dimensions and positions are referenced off of the component’s origin, moving it will change the way those things work.
Thank you for your reply. That’s my problem right now, and it’s incredibly frustrating. Do you know if there is any other way to change which plane the component references for cutting? It automatically adheres to XY, but maybe it could be changed to XZ?
You could wrap the component in a parent component and set its axes correctly so it’ll glue in the right orientation. The downside of that is you’d need to open that parent component for editing and select the window component to access the DC options.
When you set the component to have gluing properties you need to set the component’s axes so its red/green plane is parallel to the gluing plane. this shows the axes being changed during component creation.
And the resulting axes.
Obviously if you change the axis orientation in your DC, the properties that are dependint on the axes will get screwed up.
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That totally works! And I plan on adding all of the settings of the original dynamic component as custom attributes to the new parent so you don’t have to open the component twice to access them. Not totally sure if that will work, but I have hope. Thank you!
Good luck. Maybe for future windows you could plan on giving them gluing and hole cutting properties from the beginning. It’ll save you a bunch of trouble later.
Oh trust me, I’m never making that mistake again. I had vaguely wondered so many windows in the warehouse were modeled laying flat. Now I know. Thank you again for your help!
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If you model the component laying flat the red/green orientation is basically automatic. You just need to set the origin at the right height to embed the object into the surface at the correct depth.
If you were to model the window on a large ungrouped face, the axes would also be automatically aligned.
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The idea of wrapping the problem was your suggestion many years ago, I adopted it as a fix for lots of DC problems, that is isolate or contain it
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Huh. Really? I didn’t remember that as my suggestion but if it was many years ago…
You know the DC’s much better than I do now. Do you think wrapping up the component in another container is the most expedient way?