The customer often needs to mirror frame components with an asymmetrical profile where the layout of the frame is also not symmetrical. The following screenshot shows an exemplary situation.
If the user then starts the 'Mirror Components' command, selects the frame components via the subassembly as the components to be mirrored and selects the YZ plane as the mirror plane, Solid Edge offers the following solution in the 'Mirror Components' dialog based on 'Mirror' actions.
This means that additional output files (*_mir.par and *_mir.asm) will be created on the operating system to manage this solution. Here is a comparison of the files "before" and "after" this result.
The customer was looking for a way to minimize these additional output files to reduce the amount of files which need to be saved in a data management system.
SolutionBy changing the 'Action' of the frame components from 'Mirror' to 'Rotate' this extra output file for the profile part document (e.g. Angle 30x5_mir.par) is not needed and therefore not created. The following screenshot documents this variant.
The preview of this solution on the screen appears questionable but after confirming the dialog and finishing the command the profiles are properly recalculated and end in a proper final result.
Checking the files on the operating system proves that this extra output file, the mirrored version of the profile part document is not created.
The attached file PL8669638_data.7z contains the Solid Edge documents from the above example for testing purposes.
PL8669638_data.7z (264 KB)The Enhancement Request ER 10441831 with the short description "preselect Rotate while mirroring frame components to avoid an extra output file" has been submitted to improve Solid Edge in the way to automatically detect situations like this and then to automatically preselect the appropriate action for the frame components.