Space Design - Calculation - Group vs Component

Dear Al,

I have noticed that lengths (of any element) are calculated correctly only when are converted into a Component (not Group).

Is it any reason why it has to be a Component ?

Sample for Groups:

Sample for Components:

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on May 20, 2012 at 2:21pm

Thanks for the well layed out and well documneted question!

I will have to take a look at this.

The quick answer is that for components, we get the length from the component definition, and groups don't have a "definition". So we would somehow have to calculate the length from the un-rotated geometry of the group.

Is there a reason why you use groups, and and then rotate them, rather than components?

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Permalink Reply by GTM on May 20, 2012 at 3:14pm

Al,

We are using many Ruby plugins to automate drawing process.

Some of the plugins create Groups (by default) instead of Components.

Because of SD we have to be careful and check the type of Object drawn each time.

When we have a Group we are changing to Component, but during transformation we are loosing the original name of the Group - Component doesn't 'inherit' the name from the Group - or I don't know how to do that.

It it a pain as we have to name all the objects again!

I will have to speak to the SU People to ask them about the 'name inheritance' issue.

Regards

Gregory

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on May 20, 2012 at 11:30pm

We have a feature in RpTools which converts a group, or multiple copies of groups into components, and uses the group name, if available, as the component name.

We are currently adding all the RpTools functions to SpaceDesign, so this will be available to you. In the meantime, you could download the 30-day free trial of RpTools, if this function would be valuable.

Right click on one of the group instances, and it should show a function: Convert Group copies to Component.