Sure… I understand the the underlying paradigm for the structure of a design can limit the implementation options. What I think is important to keep in mind is the use case and how to accommodate it.
Along those lines, I’ll add that one thing I often do in a design is draw a component used many times first without a lot of details - e.g. a simple box of the correct dimension so I can continue to work on the big picture - and then come back later to add required details which sometimes depend on what I learn fleshing out the complete design. Without this capability, probably the only way to do that is to draw a simple box, and then later detail one of them and copy/paste into the other locations of the design (and then hope I don’t make changes and have to do that again). This is still laborious, but probably the fastest and least error prone option. For sure, when I learned to use components in this way, my productivity in SketchUp went up by a big factor.
FWIW, I am a particle physicist designing experimental apparatuses, and use these tools to make conceptual sketches to pass on to designers and engineers using SolidEdge/NX. Sketchup worked “OK” for this, passing things through dxf and AutoCad, but Shapr3d has the potential for much richer interaction with those teams.
This is also the case in my architectural designs where, say, I have a timber framed roof with 50+ identical rafters. A change in the design might then require each and every rafter to be individually altered (in many instances it’s not as simple as deleting them all and going down the pattern route with the new rafter shape).
Just having a way to organise designs in folders and then easily import/copy individual bodies from one design file to another with a defined insertion point would be very handy.
We could then create our own component libraries in a design and drag and drop bodies into working designs as we need them.
Another interesting feature of components ( in some CAD software ) is that they have parameters.
As an example when you insert a screw you can define head type, length, thread type, material etc. Like that you limit significantly the number of components you have to search to find what you want.
Hi Akis,
you are mixing up the concepts of components (parts and assemblies), parametric modelling and configurations in your post.
Components are fully independent from parametrization - the guys from Shapr3D do not need to implement parametric modelling in order to realize components.
Parametric is (usually) needed in order to realize configurations, but configurations do not come automatically with parametric (Alibre Atom 3D for instance is parametric, but has no ability for configurations - I guess by intent, these guys like selling more expensive licenses for that).
That you find things easier with configurations is a myth - as long as there is no database telling you what kind of configurations are inside a file, extensive usage of configurations will cause a huge mess instead.
Too extensive use of configurations (that applies especially for standardized parts like screws you end up having hundreds in your assemblies) is also bad for the performance, because configurations blow up the file-size and fill the RAM faster as you like.
In combination with PDM-Systems configurations are also problematic in most systems, because you would need to check out a file for adding an other Configuration, checking it in again and all referencing assemblies are now having a need for rebuild - even the already released ones. Thats why we don’t use configurations for realizing different articles in our company (a M6x30 also has different purchase-data that is also hard to handle in configurations).
I hope these insights are helpful.
Cheers Matt
Thank you for clarifying Matt, indeed I mixed the concepts. FYI I’m starting now to “play” with mechanical 3D design. My experience comes from electronics and electrical CAD. There we work a lot with “components” and I miss the concept here.
Hello All,
nice to notice I am not the only one missing “Components” functionalities.
I am mainly working with furniture’s and other interior designs, here the reuse of components in other
components can really make a different if a product will be cost efficient or not, meaning can be sold.
So, really hope there could be a simple solution for creating components and have some kind of library function around it. I can easily live without automatic updates, as long as it would recognize there is newer version of a component existing, that would be fine.
Also when preparing for production/manufacturing there is alot of screws, nuts, bolts, hinges etc that has to be defined and if it would be possible to “pick” these from a library instead of drawing them again would give a smile on my lips. This could have large impact on Shapr3D as such, as many manufacturers of standard products are delivering ready 3d models of these parts.
Really waiting for the component feature and looking forward to utilize Shapr3D even more.
As others have noted here, a Component feature is very much a need to have rather than a nice to have. Shapr3D is a great tool but this can be a real hindrance when building models for production like woodworking or similar applications. These applications don’t occasionally have repeated sub-objects, they frequently contain them and for those of us who might apply Shapr in this type of workflow, this would have a huge impact on workflow efficiency. It’s the sort of feature that is generally expected as standard. I, too, look forward to expanding what I can use Shapr for…
@Istvan is there any update on the timeline for this feature?
I also need a component feature if I’m to use Shapr3D in my workflow. Currently, I use ketchup and have many objects that I edit all at once using components. Less critical but still very helpful is would be something similar to Sketchup’s Dynamic components (or parametric modeling options) so that similar objects with different dimensions—such as kitchen cabinetry—that can all be edited at once (such as a change in the door front style).
Thanks!
Thank you Istvan, that feature looks super exciting! I can’t wait to try it.
I really appreciate you taking the time to respond, when watching the video about the feature announcement I realized you are CEO. That you take the time to read customer feedback really impresses me.
Next project I start, I’m going to see if I can do it all on Shapr3D.
Hi @Istvan, can you explain what you mean by this? I’ve been using the history-based parametric modeling beta for a few weeks now, but I’m not sure how it solves the lack of components problem.
Why don’t you create your own “library” in the files app on iPad? Every time i download a screw/component from mcmaster-carr i add it to my “library” of nested folders in the files app. The same can be done with objects created in shapr3d.
