Monday, December 31, 2007

How to Get that Median Subassembly Working For You

Well, for my first post, I'd like to show you the "secret" to getting the median subassembly to work as expected. So to get things started, let's create the assembly with everything but the median (I'll be using the "MedianRaisedWithCrown" subassembly) and the marked point (the "MarkPoint" subassembly). In this image, you'll see that I've placed the median and the marked point in the drawing but they are not currently attached to the "Lane with Median Assembly".



Now, the "secret" of getting the median subassembly to work correctly is in the order in which the median and marked point are added to the assembly. If you read the subassembly help for the "MedianRaisedWithCrown" subassembly, you will see that this subassembly requires that the "MarkPoint" subassembly be placed before the median subassembly.



We need to add the "MarkPoint" subassembly to the assembly. Before doing this, I will change the properties of the "MarkPoint" so that the Point Name and Point Codes are named something that makes sense to me. In this case, I used "Median-RT" for both.



Select the "MarkPoint" subassembly, right click, add to assembly. Select the circle at the back of the curb on the right side of the median.



Before I add the median subassembly to the assembly, I will change the properties of the median subassembly so that the Marked Point property matches the name I used for the "MarkPoint" subassembly, which in this case was "Median-RT".



Select the median subassembly, right click, add to assembly. Select the circle at the back of the curb on the left side of the median.



Well, that should do it for creating an assembly with a median. Now you might be asking yourself why I didn't just add the subassemblies directly from the Tool Palette. Unfortunately, that will have to be answered in a separate post.

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Addendum (January 17, 2008)

Thanks to Matt Castelli with The D|C|CADD Company for supplying this image and the following tip: If you already have an assembly built, but the median assembly doesn't seem to be working, move the group containing the median above the group containing the Marked Point. (Thanks, Matt!)