Welcome back! A quick review of what we covered so far:
- Depending on the information provided, we can use the ‘Sort Alphabetically’ option or the ‘Search Actor’ option:
- If we know the name of the actor we’re looking for as well as the assembly it’s in, but there’s a few hundred actors in it – we can use the ‘Sort Alphabetically’ option, which will sort all the actors in the top level and all sub-assemblies alphabetically.
- If we only know the name of the actor, we can use the ‘Search Actor’ option, where we have numerous options for actors that match our search criteria and ones that do not.
- We can use Selection Sets to group components together that are in different assemblies, so if we wanted to hide all the screws or washers in the file, we just need to create the selection set and just uncheck a box!
The last selection mode we’ll dive into is the ‘Assembly Selection Mode’ which gives us the opportunity to select an entire assembly by selecting just one component that’s in that assembly; in addition, it’ll also allow us to create better sub-assembly instruction manuals. We’ll find the ‘Assembly Selection Mode’ on the ‘Assembly’ tab as the first icon from the left. Once activated, when you select a component, it should highlight the sub-assembly in blue, as opposed to the normal orange.
We’ll hide the ‘1001_Bug_Shell” and focus on the ‘3000_RC_Boxer’. If you know the name, you can search for it. If not, but you know what it looks like graphically, you can zoom in (make sure to create a camera view, first!) to select any component in that ‘3000_RC_Boxer’ assembly’. As long as you have ‘Assembly Selection Mode’ on, it’ll select the entire ‘3000_RC Boxer’ in blue.
Next, we’ll translate the ‘3000_RC_Boxer’ up out of the ‘Buggy’ and then we’ll uncheck ‘Assembly Selection Mode’ to create our Linear Explode. Where the ‘3000_RC Boxer’ is right now, is a position I’ll reference as ‘X’. It’s final position where the sub-assembly was translated to.
We’ll then do a quick linear explode by selecting all the components and dragging the arrow along the ‘blue’ axis. Up until now, we could have done all of this without ‘Assembly Selection Mode’ – what’s the purpose of it? The advantage lies in the next segment. After we explode our components, we can then create images to show the components collapsing back into their neutral positions. Do we want these components to be going back to the ‘X’ position or back to the where they were inside the ‘Buggy’? As you’ll see below, when ‘Assembly Selection Mode’ is used, the components will restore back to the ‘X’ position. If we were to create an animation, we would see the components being assembled outside of the main assembly first, and then we would have the ‘3000_RC_Boxer’ return to the assembly as a whole, instead of individual actors.
Assembly Selection Mode used:
‘Assembly Selection Mode’ not used:
When this entire process is done without ‘Assembly Selection Mode’, we’ll see that components will return back to the main assembly, as opposed to the ‘X’ position. In an animation, we would see all these individual components would collapse back into their neutral position in the main assembly. Which one’s correct? Based off how we had created this, the method using ‘Assembly Selection Mode’ would be easier for someone assembling this together to follow because we’re essentially focusing on assembling a specific sub-assembly first, and then assembling the sub-assembly back into the main body. At the end of the day, there is no real right or wrong way to do this; what’s important is that you understand the behavior of both so that you can create assembly instruction manuals that clarify what’s going on, instead of confuse!