[w i l l]

When I save as mxs (or export) using the plugin, then open that mxs in Studio all my objects are contained within their own group, i.e. 1 object is contained within 1 group etc. Why is this? Is there a way of altering this?

It causes problems because when I import parts (in order to replace any current parts (I just use 'rename the new part' as replace crashes Studio)) they import but only a group icon shows for the part and no object icon... so there is actually no object within the scene. In order for studio to show these new imported objects as just objects (instead of a group icon not linked to any object) I have to take all of the original objects out of their groups (groups that Studio created on import) before importing.

So it would be easier if Studio didn't put all of these original objects under their own group icon to start with.

[JDHill]

Actually it's the plugin that puts all those things into groups - it is a deliberate (and requested) aspect of the export to preserve the hierarchy of the SW assembly in the MXS. I never had anyone ask for the plugin to just discard that information, but since you have, I went in and put a new option to export assemblies with no hierarchy. So, you'll see that in the next update.

For the time being, you could open the .sldprt you want to replace and export a new MXS from there - there are no groups exported at all in that case.

[w i l l]

Yeah I could do but when i import that part/object into Studio its origin or position wont be correct in relation to the existing assembly in Studio.

Why does studio assign a group icon to the new part/object that has been imported from the assembly without actually giving it an object icon/making it an object?

[JDHill]

I see what you mean, but I have no idea why it does that - I can only tell you how the plugin works. I can say it is no longer a problem when I don't export any groups, so at least it will work better for you once I release the next version of the plugin.

[Eric Lagman]

I mentioned this a while back, but I dont think it was understood what I was asking. Maintaing Solidworks heirarchy is good, but studio brings in things with the wrong heirarchy. All parts are put into their own group like Will said which is not how solidworks heirarchy is. That would be like every part in an assembly being part of its own assembly then having those assemblies being under a larger top level assembly. This makes navigating through the studio tree very difficult and tedious.

JD are you saying to get the heirarchy to work properly you have to disable groups completely? That would not be good.

[JDHill]

I don't think I'm following you - do you have an example of this? Depending on how the plugin gets the components, the order may be different (probably reversed - maybe I can do something about this), but I don't see the grouping problem you're referring to - are you maybe not taking multi-body parts into account?



It's true that if you only have single-body parts, that there will only be one part per assembly-level node, but I don't really have any way around that - the platform allows it, so I have to follow suit.

JD are you saying to get the heirarchy to work properly you have to disable groups completely?

I didn't understand this question either - either you export a hierarchy, or you don't (and the choice will be optional) - I can't think of any middle ground. Maybe if you could explain a bit more what you mean by 'work properly'. I think navigating the tree in Studio is just about as tedious as it is in SolidWorks - if you want to get to some specific body nested in an assembly, you are going to have to expand just as many containers - actually more, since you also have to expand the 'Bodies' folder in SW.

[Eric Lagman]

It's true that if you only have single-body parts, that there will only be one part per assembly-level node, but I don't really have any way around that - the platform allows it, so I have to follow suit.

Its the one part with one body that is being grouped that is throwing me for a loop. Many assemblies I have consist of one top level assembly and parts or more sub assemblies containing parts with just one body. All these one body parts get put into a group which leads to visual confusion when looking at the studio object tree. Wish there was a way around this.

[JDHill]

I figured that was what you meant. If I am guessing right, you would prefer that if:

- a component only has one body, that the node in the MXS which corresponds to that component would be skipped, and the body it contains would appear at this level
- a component has multiple bodies, that the node in the MXS would appear as it does now, with multiple bodies nested inside

I don't know that this would be worth messing with at this time - this part of the export is extremely touchy already, since by default the transformations of parts are carried in the grouping hierarchy. There are already alot of special cases in the code, and attempting this would require some extensive testing - I want to get an update out pretty quickly here, and I don't think the payoff is great enough to change this right now.

Btw, I did manage to stop the order of components from being reversed, but multiple bodies still come in a pretty-much random order when I request them from SW.

[Eric Lagman]

Thanks JD. Yeah I would say its more of a mild annoyance than a huge problem. Looking forward to the update you are working on.