Discover valuable techniques for importing, manipulating, and joining 3D components in your models. This article guides you through the process of importing a lampshade cap assembly, applying a joint origin, and joining it to the rest of the model.
Key Insights
- The process involves importing the required component into your model, in this case, a lampshade cap assembly, and moving it away from the rest of the geometry to avoid confusion.
- The next step involves placing a joint origin between two faces and reorienting it as needed. The joint origin serves as the point of attachment between the imported component and the main model.
- Regularly checking user parameters is crucial to ensuring all dimensions, constraints, and geometry update correctly as you work through your model.
In this video, we will import the Lampshade Cap Assembly into our model, apply a Joint Origin, and join our model together. So let's get started.
If you will, please scroll down in your Data Panel and open Step 5, Bulb Assembly. Once your file is open, scroll up and find Import Lampshade Cap Assembly. I will click and drag to import this directly into my model.
When that model comes in, go ahead and move it into space away from the rest of your lampshade. It does not matter where you put it—just get it away from the rest of your geometry. I'll press ENTER, and we can see that this imported geometry has come in as a linked file.
That means that we cannot directly edit any of the components, but we can move them around and join them to our model. If we want to break this link, go ahead and select your component, right-click, Break Link. I will leave it as a linked component for this file, but in future steps, it will have the link broken.
I'll go ahead and collapse this, and let's place a Joint Origin in our Lampshade Arm. I will go to Assemble > Joint Origin, and I will place a Joint Origin between two faces. I'll select the outside face here, and the outside face here, and hold CTRL and select the center of this circle.
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I need to reorient my Joint Origin, so I'll select Reorient and select this top face to reorient my Joint Origin. I'll click OK, and now our Joint Origin is in place. I’ll go to Joint, make sure that the type is set to Rigid, and select first this Joint Origin, and second this Joint Origin.
You'll see the rubber washer move in my component, because it is what the Joint Origin is hosted to. Remember, not all components will move in the joint preview—only the components that are joined in that specific joint. The rest of the components will move after we click OK.
Everything looks good here, so I’ll click OK, and do a Zoom Extents. Everything in my model looks great. As I move my geometry around, my Lampshade Cap moves with it. We haven't done this in a while, but let's check our user parameters.
I’ll go to Modify > Change Parameters, and we can see that when I update these amounts—and feel free to change them to any amounts you would like—all of our geometry updates. Our holes are all changing size accordingly. Our Lampshade Arm has adjusted so that the inside width stays the same, but my Lampshade Arm is still in the middle, and my widths and thicknesses all look correct.
I’ll change these back to 15,30, and 5. You want to make sure that when you're using user parameters, you are checking regularly as you work through your model to ensure that all of your dimensions, constraints, and geometry update correctly with your user parameters. I’ll click OK, and we can click the Home icon and group our features in the Timeline. I will select my features, right-click, Create Group, and save your file.
In the next video, we will bring in our fastener assemblies and talk about their parametric modeling capabilities. I will see you in the next video.
