How to show some components of a sub assembly as phantom and see through in drawing of upper level assembly?

[bnemec]

I've been trying several things, changing line types, display state, etc. none are giving a drawing that's going to work very well.

What we have is a purchased sub-assembly, lets call it "AsmP.sldasm", that goes into a bunch of different assemblies we build in house. A few of those upper level assemblies do not use all of the components of the purchased assembly. So they are simply removed in those cases. I am working on a drawing of that inhouse assembly, lets call it "MyAsm.sldasm", and am trying to make obvious which components of the purchased assembly are to be removed. Preferably graphically in the views.

This cannot require edits or configs in the purchased AsmP.sldasm file.

The best case that I would like to see is for the drawing to show those removed components in some dotted phantom line font and for them to be transparent so the parts behind them are shown, not as hidden but normal visible edges. It would be really slick, I think, if this could be driven from the Assembly where I can group those parts in folder or envelop or something.

I don't think this is that uncommon of a practice I'm just not finding a good way to do it. I'll make a up some example files that I can upload trying to display what I'm after.

Edit: I forgot to add I knew how to do this in Solid Edge which might be the mental block to how to do it in SW. It wasn't done from the model though but it was simple view properties, select the parts to show as ref and done, they render as phantom line layer and are transparent.

[bnemec]

I think Alternate Position might work. In the Default config hide the parts to be removed. In the "alternate position" config show the components. But the drawing becomes very slow to work with.

[Glenn Schroeder]

It may be slightly tedious, but you might be able to do it in the Drawing by right-clicking on the components (either in the drawing view or tree) and selecting "Component Line Font..." from the drop-down. You will adjust the line style and thickness for Visible Edges for the "ghost" components and Hidden Edges for the components behind them.

[bnemec]

It may be slightly tedious, but you might be able to do it in the Drawing by right-clicking on the components (either in the drawing view or tree) and selecting "Component Line Font..." from the drop-down. You will adjust the line style and thickness for Visible Edges for the "ghost" components and Hidden Edges for the components behind them.

I like this option somewhat. Selection is tedious and I don't know how to use a selection set from the assembly in the drawing. I can click it in the feature tree under a drawing view, but I don't know how to get the right click context menu so I can do stuff with the selection.

Probably the biggest con of this option is it does not make the parts transparent, so the other parts are still hidden.

[sergio.monti]

I've done it in the past using Alternate position with 2 configs like you just said and it works very well. Mine was a small project so I did'n noticed any slow down in the drawing.
I think the newer versions of SW allows to create alternative position with Display States, too. So you could have only one configuration and two display states. Display states shouldn't affect speed so much.

[Glenn Schroeder]

. . . Probably the biggest con of this option is it does not make the parts transparent, so the other parts are still hidden.

Right-click on the component (again, either in the tree or drawing view) and select "Show/Hide > Show Hidden Edges." If you have used the component line function referred above to have the hidden edges of these components the same thickness and style as visible edges it should show just like it would if the ghost component wasn't there.

Edit: SW2023 has an option on drawing views where if you can have components set as transparent in the model then they can act that way in the drawing view. Are you by any chance using that version?

[JSculley]

Since this is a 'modified' purchased part, why not just build that into the assembly structure?

TopAssy
+---ModifiedAssy
+--PurchasedAssy

Then you can fiddle with transparency and such in ModifiedAssy without affecting PurchasedAssy. Add in the component line font and the new See through transparency option from SW 2023 and you get what you are looking for:

[bnemec]

Right-click on the component (again, either in the tree or drawing view) and select "Show/Hide > Show Hidden Edges." If you have used the component line function referred above to have the hidden edges of these components the same thickness and style as visible edges it should show just like it would if the ghost component wasn't there.

Edit: SW2023 has an option on drawing views where if you can have components set as transparent in the model then they can act that way in the drawing view. Are you by any chance using that version?


image.png

We are still on 2019, will go to 2023 before too long.

The line types are for the entire document I think? so that would mean hidden edges of any part in any view would look like normal lines (or whatever we would set that to)?

[bnemec]

Since this is a 'modified' purchased part, why not just build that into the assembly structure?

TopAssy
+---ModifiedAssy
+--PurchasedAssy

Then you can fiddle with transparency and such in ModifiedAssy without affecting PurchasedAssy. Add in the component line font and the new See through transparency option from SW 2023 and you get what you are looking for:

image.png

I don't quite follow the assembly structure. Are you saying another sub-assembly file for the "As used" version of the purchased assembly that uses the purchased assembly?

[Glenn Schroeder]

We are still on 2019, will go to 2023 before too long.

The line types are for the entire document I think? so that would mean hidden edges of any part in any view would look like normal lines (or whatever we would set that to)?

Yes, there is a global setting for line types for the whole document, but as I said above you can override that by right-clicking on a component and choosing "Component Line Font..." from the drop-down. That will open a dialog box. De-select "Use document defaults" near the top left, and then you can select the desired line style and thickness for various line types.

If there are multiple instances of this component and you only want this change to affect the one you selected then be sure to select "From selection" near the bottom. Otherwise it will affect the other ones also.

[JSculley]

I don't quite follow the assembly structure. Are you saying another sub-assembly file for the "As used" version of the purchased assembly that uses the purchased assembly?

Yes. You purchase a part or assembly and give it a part number. You drop the part or assembly into another assembly by itself and perform the modifications there. There is a drawing showing the modifications. This assembly gets a different part number. You drop this assembly into your top level assembly.

I've done this for years with parts (e.g. add a keyway to a purchased gear) and assemblies (e.g. add a flat to a motor/gearbox shaft).

If you use the same modification in multiple top level assemblies, you only have to document the modification once, in the drawing of the modified part/assembly. If a different top level assembly requires a different modification, you just drop the original purchased part in a new assembly, modify it there and so on.

[DavidWS]

It depends if you want it to show as the same line font throughout the drawing or not, but you could also put that part on a layer, which will show it according to the color/linefont of that layer (everywhere in the drawing).