ST8: Assembly Productivity Enhancements

For ST8, Solid Edge has added a few nice assembly productivity enhancements.

The first one sounds simple, but once you use it a few times, I think you’ll agree that it saves a lot of time. Top Level Assembly document filter is on your Files Of Type list in your Open menu. This option will filter out all of the subassemblies in a directory, and only display the top level assembly files. I think you’ll agree that this is a nice tool when you have a lot of files in a single folder, but you’re only looking for the top level assembly. It’s also particularly nice when you’re unfamiliar with a particular product model. Sorting assembly files by size isn’t always the most effective way to find the top assembly.

Another enhancement is that Chinese and Taiwanese standard parts are now being delivered with the Standard Parts library. If you use one of those standards, or work with Solid Edge users who do, this should be a huge step forward for you. I can’t imagine needing to make all my standard parts myself.

The third assembly productivity enhancement I’ll address here is the new Repair Missing Files dialog. Find this on the Inspect tab, in the Evaluate group.

If you open an assembly with a missing file, the dialog will appear immediately on open. The primary purpose for the tool seems to be to help you find files that have been moved rather than files that have been renamed. Renamed files can also be located, but not automatically, and not by the default option. The first time time you open an assembly with a missing file, this dialog (below) will appear.

The buttons on the right side of the dialog are, in order from top to bottom:

• Search In…


• Scroll to…


• Replace Part


• Replace with Standard Parts


• Replace with New part