Unique Parts option
 

Hey,

Can someone explain how does the option "Unique Parts" work ? (Under Parts -> right click -> Unique Parts).

Thanks,

Unique Parts
 

I didn't know what this was, so that is a pretty good clue that this is not often needed. I asked a developer and he explained it to me... It happens when a part name has a : in the middle. You can only see that colon in the tetin file, but it can hide parts within parts...

So how does this usually happen? Imagine if you have a box (create a primative cube in part GEOM), and then you apply a load (like pressure) to 3 of the surfaces...

Behind the scenes, we do boundary conditions on a per part basis. You can't have a part with two different boundary conditions. But we don't want the user to have to deal with this, especially as you add lots of different and often overlapping loads, constraints, pressures, forces, displacements, etc.

So what really happens is you get your original part call "GEOM", and you get a hidden behind the scenes part called "GEOM:PRESSURE".

If you then right click on a part and choose Info, you will see it gives a summary;

Note, this was a 6 sided cube, but it says it only has 3 surfaces. The other 3 were moved into the hidden "GEOM:PRESSURE" part.

So, now what if we actually wanted to split this part into its constituent sub parts?

You would go to "Parts" => "Unique Parts" and it would split it up...

Basically, it replaces the : with a # that it can include in the name of the part...

(Note; if you test this out, you must save and quit and reload before the Unique parts option will work).

I had the issue with the missing surfaces, and I found that the " Unique Part" option solves that issue, but didn't understand how ^^
Thanks for the explanations !