Mold designers may want to perform certain shape modifications that cross several components. These edits are more easily performed by merging/extracting the components, than by activating and editing each component individually.

 

For example, the Create Slide or Insert command may need to modify a couple of plates referenced from a part library -- but the command only works on shapes local to the part. it doesn't work on inserted components.

 

In this case, you would merge the plates so they can both be edited in one operation. Then they are re-extracted as components so they can be documented and machined as individual parts.

 

The series of steps below illustrates this process.

 

STEP 1 - Insert Components
History	Components	Geometry
Ins_Widget.1 Ins_Bracket.1	Widget.1 Bracket.1	(no shapes)

 

 

STEP 2- Merge Components
History	Components	Geometry
Ins_Widget.1 Ins_Bracket.1 Merge1_Comp	Widget.1 Bracket.1	2 shapes (widget and bracket)

 

 

STEP 3- Modify shapes - For parts with multiple shapes, the Unlink Shapes from Components command can be used at this time to allow unlinked shapes to be excluded from the Extract Merged Components command.

 

 

STEP 4 - Extract components
History	Components	Geometry
Ins_Widget.1 Ins_Bracket.1 Merge1_Comp Extract.1	Widget.1 Bracket.1	(no shapes)