Re-Parenting Skeletons

Re-Parenting is a complicated concept but easy enough to understand once you've done it. Sometimes during a design cycle, you need to change which is the parent assembly of features within a skeleton. Re-Parenting can be done both down to a lower assembly level or up to a higher assembly level.

Re-Parenting of features is usually needed for two reasons:

1. To incorporate designations from higher/lower assembly levels
2. To re-orient a placement coordinate system based on the default location of a different assembly level

Re-Parenting Basics

With the Geometry Copier, using the top-level RF_SWITCHING_CABINET.ASM as our parent equipment assembly, we will copy the SWITCH_COAX_H28S_HORIZ_PINNED.PRT published features into the RF_SWITCH_CAB_CABLING_SKEL.PRT skeleton (shown below). Take notice of the (ID Path) being 37.27, this ID path is shown in the skeleton with our nomenclature of CS-37_27 and ECG-37_27s (periods are not allowed in feature names in Creo, so we use an underscore). On the right hand side of the Copier tree, we see the SWITCH_COAX_H28S_HORIZ_PINNED shown under the RF_SWITCHING_CABINET, which is the parent assembly.

We store this parent information and other relevant information as feature parameters on the placement coordinate system CS-37_27 for the external copy geometries (shown below). The ID Path is shown in the CadActive-created parameter: CADACTIVE_CONTEXT_TO_MDL_PATH.

How To Re-Parent

In this example, we want to change the parent from the RF_SWITCHING_CABINET.ASM to SHELF_1_EQUIP.ASM. To do this, we will change the left side of the Copier tree from the RF_SWITCHING_CABINET to the new parent assembly - SHELF_1_EQUIP (shown below). This will change the left side of the tree based on the new assembly.

Now that the new SHELF_1_EQUIP parent assembly has been selected on the left side of the tree, we can simply right-click on the components we want to re-parent on the right side of the tree. 

Once the model is regenerated, you will see the CS-37_27 and ECG-37_27s change to CS-27 and ECG-27s. In addition, when you look at the feature parameters of the CS-27 coordinate system, you will notice changes to the three parameters (outlined below).

1. CADACTIVE_COPY_CONTEXT_MODEL changed from RF_SWITCHING_CABINET.ASM to SHELF_1_EQUIP.ASM
2. CADACTIVE_PRNT_TO_CONTEXT_PATH changed from blank to 37 - the top-level to the ID Path of the SHELF_1_EQUIP.ASM
3. CADACTIVE_CONTEXT_TO_MDL_PATH (the ID Path from the parent) changed from 37.27 to 27 due to the above two changes.