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We have previously talked a little about copying and editing parents, there I mentioned there was a third option allowing us to carry out a Copy without impacting the parent files at all, leading us into this posts topic, a new command for Copy Design that is perhaps not so simple to understand on first viewing, the ability to Exclude.
Its probably just as important with this setting to understand what it does NOT do, and that is, it does not actually modify the target file's structure, it is not at all the same as Remove (see details on remove option elsewhere) and is quite different to reuse, but it can be a handy trick to quickly create a copy without unnecessary parent files.
As an example, let's say we want to copy a whole bunch of sub assemblies from an existing project but not the entire assembly – use Exclude
Lets say we want to copy the model but we don't have any need for the drawing documentation or presentation files – use Exclude
By right clicking on a file and excluding, the copy design operations ignores it, there will be no copy created and the file itself will not be edited (as would occur if we reused), creating a simple approach to copying multiple sub components at once or trimming unnecessary parent files.
You will see in the video below with Automatically Copy Parents enabled, a change to one of the Combo Assembly components affects the tree above it as expected. If we simply set the Combo Assembly itself to reuse then this results in an assembly Edit. Now, resetting the tree and setting the Combo Assembly to Exclude allows us to copy a number of its sub components without editing or impacting any other area of the assembly.
In the video example you'll see we can select to exclude at either the top level or at nested levels in the tree, the results though being the same – the source file is left as is and we have a subset of the loaded data copied to create new files. Here without editing the sub or main assemblies we have copied and renamed 3 components along with their drawings (where applicable) in one operation.
As we mentioned at the outset, Exclude, while it can be applied to individual sub components as well as parents, does not actually remove a selected file from a copied structure – we cannot break file dependencies by excluding children in Copy Design. To remove children we will need to reuse them here and remove from inside the CAD application context, this makes sure we are not breaking the model and its required references.
So why not load just the files I intend to copy? The real value here is in simplifying the selection of sub structures to copy by loading via a common parent, in situations where you cannot remember the sub component names, you can also get those files loaded without requiring a search.
In the end it's a nice neat way to copy what you need and nothing else – keeping your copying classy by being exclusive.
– Allan
