About Parts, Part Assemblies, Part Instances

Part Instances are when a part is repeated multiple times throughout the model.

Using parts can enable:

Automated mesh creation, property and material assignment using representation controls and PDM metadata. See About Representations for more information.
Parallelized meshing using BatchMesher. See About Representations for more information.
One time meshing of repeated parts, with automatic positioning using instancing. See Create Parts, Part Assemblies, and Part Instances for more information.
Collaborative model build approach between multiple users via the Library. See Manage Representations for more information.
Maintaining the digital thread through versioning. See Manage Part Revisions for more information.
Building multiple simulation models from a single HyperMesh model using configuration management. See Manage Configurations for more information.

Parts and Part Assemblies

HyperMesh supports parts ( ) and part assemblies ( ).

Parts assemblies and parts facilitate the one-to-one mapping of a CAD hierarchy into the HyperMesh environment as a CAE hierarchy. The CAE hierarchy can be created manually by importing a geometry file or imported from a PDM system via a neutral file format such as PLMXML.

Parts can be used to organize a physical part that is made up of multiple components in a CAE model as a single part.

If a part is comprised of multiple components, such as cast parts or tailor-welded blanks, you can perform actions such as visualization view modes, model management, and connector link definition at the part level.

Part Instances

The Part Browser provides support for part instances. Part instances are created automatically when reading in the geometry or BOM.

Certain parts may appear in a model multiple times. Typical examples include bolts, hinges, or symmetric parts. Using instancing, the part can be meshed once and then the content can be propagated to all instances using Instance > Sync.

Part Instances () share UID and Part names. The name assigned to instances are incremented by *.ixx, where xx indicates the number of the instance. The positioning of Part Instances is dictated by the transformation matrix applied to the Part. Part Instances can also be created and broken interactively in a session. Upon creation, you will automatically be prompted to transform the part via the Transform tool. When broken, instances are split into two separate parts that are independent of each other.

Creating or saving part representations for instantiated parts saves a single representation in the repository. Importing instantiated parts automatically positions them according to their respective 4 x 3 transformation matrices.