About Adding Foreign Components to TIM Assemblies
CATIA, NX, SolidWorks, Autodesk Inventor, and Creo Elements/Direct*.sdac assembly models that you opened in Creo and saved or converted as Translated Image Models (TIMs) become out-of-date when foreign components are subsequently added to the source models. You can then use the Associative Topology Bus (ATB) Update command to update the TIM assemblies because the ATB information and parameters of the source models are preserved in the TIM assemblies. The TIM assemblies are updated to include the foreign components that were newly added to the Autodesk Inventor, CATIA, NX, Creo Elements/Direct, and SolidWorks source models.
However, you can set preferences for the inclusion of the newly-added foreign components as non-Creo or Creo Elements/Direct models or as TIM components in the TIM assemblies. When foreign components are added to the source models, you can select an out-of-date TIM assembly on the Model Tree, and click one of the following Model > Operations > ATB options before you use the ATB Update command to associatively update the TIM assembly:
• New Components as Non-Creo Models—Adds the newly-added foreign components of the source assembly as non-Creo models to the TIM assembly when you use the ATB Update command to update the TIM assembly.
• New Components TIM—Adds the newly-added foreign components of the source assembly as TIM components to the TIM assembly when you use the ATB Update command to update the TIM assembly.
These options are only available when you select TIM assemblies that are created as a copy or by the conversion of non-Creo or Creo Elements/Direct models as TIM assemblies. When your selection includes TIM assemblies, native Creo models, and non-Creo models, only the TIM assemblies are associatively updated to include the newly-added foreign components of the source models.
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 The option that you initially select for the inclusion of the newly-added foreign components in the TIM assembly is set as the default preference. This setting persists in the TIM assembly model for its subsequent retrievals and associative updates across Creo sessions. |
Therefore, when foreign components are added to the source models, you can use the ATB Update command to associatively update the TIM assemblies so that they include the newly-added foreign components according to the preference you initially set as the default for each TIM assembly. Unless required, you need not explicitly change these settings each time you retrieve and update the TIM assemblies to include the newly-added foreign components of the source models. If you do not set these preferences for the TIM assemblies, the TIM assemblies are updated to include the newly-added foreign components as non-Creo models by default.
The newly-added foreign components of the source models are, however, not always included in the TIM assemblies according to the preference that you initially set as the default, as in the following instances:
• If the newly-added foreign component of the source model is an occurrence of a component in the TIM assembly, the foreign component is not considered as a new component although the associative update adds the foreign component to the TIM assembly. The newly-added foreign component is added as a non-Creo model or as a TIM component depending on whether the existing component in the TIM assembly is a non-Creo model or a TIM component. For example, if the newly-added foreign component of the source model is an occurrence of a non-Creo component of the TIM assembly, the foreign component is added as a non-Creo model and not as a TIM component although you had initially set New Components TIM as the default setting for the TIM assembly.
• If the newly-added foreign component is an additional occurrence of a component whose multiple occurrences exist in a non-Creo assembly, with each occurrence placed at different levels in various sub-assemblies, each level of the assembly is considered independently for the associative update and inclusion of the foreign component. For example, when an occurrence of the foreign component p1 exists as a TIM component in the converted or copied TIM subassembly sub1, and another occurrence of p1 exists as a non-Creo model in subassembly sub2, additional occurrences of p1 are added as TIM components to subassembly sub1 while the additional occurrences of p1 are added as non-Creo models in subassembly sub2. Subassemblies sub1 and sub2 may belong to a top-level copied or converted TIM assembly.
• If the newly-added foreign components are internal to the non-Creo assemblies, the associative update adds these foreign components to the TIM assembly as internal TIM components. Virtual and intersected components and the body components of multi-bodied parts are internal to the non-Creo assemblies and are part of the source models. Body parts are added as TIM components when additional bodies are added to a multi-body part that was converted or copied as a TIM.