CAD Assembly: Autodesk Inventor, Creo Parametric
This feature is only available in the Premium and Enterprise editions of Ansys Ansys Zemax OpticStudio.
These objects provide a dynamic link to an assembly defined in Autodesk Inventor and Creo Parametric respectively. Autodesk Inventor must be installed to use the CAD Assembly: Autodesk Inventor object, which dynamically links to an Autodesk Inventor assembly file (*.iam). Creo Parametric must be installed to use the CAD Part: Creo Parametric object, which dynamically links to a Creo Parametric assembly file (*.asm). All assembly files, along with all of the individual part files (Autodesk Inventor: *.ipt; Creo Parametric: *.prt) that make up each assembly, must be stored in the appropriate folders, which may be user defined; see "Folders" . Note that the individual part files that make up each assembly are not included when creating an archive of a design that contains an assembly object(see "Backup To Archive File" ).
By default, the assembly file will be read in as a single object, and thus all of the parts in the assembly may only be assigned a single set of optical properties. These optical properties may already be defined in the file, if the file had been used in a previous OpticStudio design and the "Save CAD Assembly/Part Properties" option had been used to save the optical properties in that previous design (see " Save CAD Assembly/Part Properties " under "Edit" ). If this is the case, those properties may be read in from the file and assigned to the object in new design. However, this is not mandatory, and new optical properties can be assigned to the file in the new design if desired. The option to read OpticStudio optical properties from the file will be presented when the file is first loaded, at which point the user may decide the appropriate course of action.
OpticStudio supports the ability to explode the assembly back into its constituent parts, allowing optical properties to be assigned to each of the individual parts of the assembly. The option to explode the assembly file into individual parts will also be offered when the file is first loaded into OpticStudio. If this option is not selected upon first load, it may be subsequently selected by choosing either "Explode Autodesk Inventor Assembly" or "Explode Creo Parametric Assembly" (depending on the object selected) under the Tools menu of the Non-sequential Component Editor. In order for the appropriate tool to be activated, the cursor must be somewhere on the row containing the CAD Assembly object. For more information see "Explode Autodesk Inventor Assembly"or "Explode Creo Parametric Assembly".
When the assembly file is exploded, the constituent parts that are created are each in the form of the CAD Part: STEP/IGES/SAT object (see " CAD Part: STEP/IGES/SAT " ). Thus, the individual parts of the assembly file cannot be modified inside of OpticStudio. If modification of the individual parts is desired, each part should be read into OpticStudio using the corresponding CAD Part object (see " CAD Part: AutoDesk Inventor" and "CAD Part: Creo Parametric" " ).
The only parameter associated with the CAD Assembly objects is the "Explode?" flag (parameter 1). Note that manual modification of the "Explode?" parameter does not actually change the behavior of the object. The parameter is there for reference only so OpticStudio knows when to look for the exploded constituent parts already extracted by the appropriate tool and referenced in the editor. The flag is 0 if the assembly has not been exploded, and is set to 1 if the assembly has been exploded. Once the flag has been set to 1 by the appropriate tool, there is no way to recombine the assembly, other than manually deleting the objects corresponding to the constituent parts. To explode an assembly which has not already been exploded, use the tool described in "Explode Autodesk Inventor Assembly" or "Explode Creo Parametric Assembly".
Use of CAD Assembly: Creo Parametric and CAD Assembly: Autodesk Inventor objects does not require any special action from the user: OpticStudio will automatically open the corresponding creating program in silent mode, meaning that the application will not appear anywhere on the user's monitor but a process will be visible in the user's Task Manager listing. This process should be allowed to run as long as OpticStudio is running, in order to ensure that communication is always available between OpticStudio and the creating program. The creating program running in silent mode will be closed automatically once OpticStudio itself is closed.
Next: