Stuff to do at SEU: Simplifying Design with Multi-body Parts

One of the break out sessions this year will be Ricardo Espinosa’s “Simplifying the Design Process with Multi-Body Parts”. This is held on Wednesday at 2 pm.

Multi-body parts is an often misunderstood area of CAD. You can use it for all sorts of things, but it’s not really meant as a replacement for assemblies. I don’t know Ricardo or his take on the topic, but this is a general area in CAD that has a lot of power that people don’t harness. It’s also a relatively new part of the workflow in Solid Edge, so there may be parts of the new tools that you’re not familiar with. I’ve written a 3-part series on multi-body modeling in general, and multi-body developments in ST9, ST6.

The thing is with this session, you’re bound to learn something useful. Multi-bodies in Synchronous can be used in ways you wouldn’t be able to use them in ordered. So there’s a whole range of possible topics right there. And then there’s the master model techniques, the boolean stuff, reference bodies, and of course all surfacing is basically an exercise in construction bodies, since surface features do not automatically merge the same way that solid bodies do.

Plus, Solid Edge has a unique take on certain multi-body functions, and new terminology you might have to get used to. There’s the concept of “lumps” which are actually separate volumes within geometry classified as a “body”. And of course the perenial favorite argument of zero thickness errors.

Other practical applications are master model, multi-material overmolding, inseparable assemblies, flexible parts, synch-ordered mixed mode, intermediate modeling steps, bridging between solids, reused data, etc…

So now you have to go see Ricardo Espinosa’s presentation on multi-bodies, Wednesday at 2 pm, just to see which area he will cover. I’ll be there. It’ll be a gas.