changing a part to a "shell" for assembly purposes?? how?

I know I have read this somewhere, but cannot find the information
anywhere - so forgive me for asking again.

When dealing with an assembly, it actually mounts atop my machine frame. I
usually start with the machine frame as the initial part and build up for
reference & to give certain non engineering types a perspective of what the
assembly will look like in place. I then hide or surpress it when not
needed. My machine frame is an assembly itself with quite a few parts and
things are starting to get slow.

I remember reading someone had a hint to save the frame as a different file
type and re-import it as just a simple shell. I swear they recommended
exporting it as an iges file but that does not work. SW will not import the
file into an assembly (or at least I cannot figure out how, I just started
playing with SW2k4).

Thanks for any suggestions.

Jeff

 

You can save the assembly as a part.....there are a few different options
here....just "exterior faces"...."exterior components" or "all components"

Krister L

 

For round trip back into an assembly with dummy parts you can export to STEP
much better than IGES.

Corey

 

And Parasolid should be better than either.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"