Master File Changes and Real-Time Updates Across Assemblies in a Woodworking CAD Project

In this video, we're going to make some changes to our design by altering the master file and watching all those changes populate across our parts and our assemblies. So first things first,  let's open up our master file playground. There we go.

And let's also open our frame sub-assembly because those items will be altered directly. We want to see that happen. So let's go to, I say, 002 frame.

Okay. Let's go ahead and minimize that and then maximize this. The first thing I want to do is change the thickness of these large beams.

Say you were maybe sourcing a certain type of material online or at a local hardware or lumber store and discovered that you got the measurement wrong or that they replaced with another item with a different measurement. We can change that design in our global variables and watch everything update accordingly. If we go to tools, equations,  and then our global variables, we'll change the themes thickness from five and a half inches to 5.75 inches.

All right. Allow it to update. I'm just going to get a measurement of one of these lines to make sure that it updated correctly.

And it did 5.75. Now let's minimize this and bring back the sub-assembly. But before we do, it's saying that some items in our sub-assembly have changed. Yes, we are well aware.

Let's click yes. All right. Let's go ahead and open that up.

Let's grab a measurement of one of these beams. Now it should be 5.75 and it is perfect. Once you've done that, go ahead and save your work.

It'll save not just the sub-assembly,  but all the parts that have changed as well as the master file, which changed those parts. Click save all. All right.

The next thing we want to do is set it so that these beams don't show the condition that goes all the way into the ground. Let's bring up the configuration that shows them stopping at the ground just for appearance sake. We can do that by going part by part and changing the configuration that's brought in.

Let's start with this one here and we'll just right click on it and go to open part. And let's go to master file playground,  right click and go to configure feature. Right now it's set to the extended configuration.

Let's make sure it's set to the default configuration, suppressing the feature that brings it into the ground. Okay. It's lost the body for the body delete keep feature.

That's okay. We'll just reassign it again. We'll right click on body keep delete, go to edit feature,  reselect the correct body, close it out with a green check mark, save your work,  and then close it out with an X. Click yes.

All right. As you can see that piece is now shortened, which is what we want to do, but we still have these six pieces over here and this large beam over here. So let's just do it with this beam here.

And for this, we don't need to open the part directly. As you know, we can affect a part file while still being in the assembly. So let's right click and go to edit part.

Now we are in the part file. If we go to the feature manager, we can see in blue, the part that's being adjusted,  click the dropdown arrow. And just like before, we'll right click on master file playground,  click configure feature and set it to default click.

Okay. Just like before it lost the body,  but that's okay. We'll just reassign it.

Right click the body, delete, keep edit feature,  reselect that large beam. That's supposed to go there. Click the green check mark.

And once you've done that, close out the part by selecting this button here. And that's it. Your sub assembly should have updated.

Go ahead and save your work. All right. The next thing we're going to do is open up our deck and frame sub assembly.

Yep. Rebuild the document. It has also changed.

We should see all these beams shrink at the same time. Once it's done rebuilding. Beautiful.

Okay. What we want to do is take this angle bracket here and add it here and here. So let's go ahead and do that.

I'll click on it and then out of the feature manager, just hold control and drag it in to our graphics plane here. Set some mates. There we go.

Coincidence mate. We'll do that one. Fine.

Just drag this where it wants to be. And I'll use a width mate to finish out this. Oh, here we go.

Make sure with mate is checked. There we go. Beautiful.

And then recheck with mate and then set this with me. Beautiful. Close that out.

And we can just mirror on the other side. So make sure there isn't already a plane we can use. Currently there is not.

So I'll create one now. There we go. There's a mid plane.

And with that mid plane highlighted, I'm going to use mirror component and mirror this bracket here. There we go. Once you've done that,  go ahead and save your work.

Give some time to update. Beautiful. And then just close that out.

And you can close this one out too. And then close out your master file playground. Now go and open the final drawing GA001.

And these items should also update as a result. We're just going to give it a second. It's taking a minute because it has a lot of parts and assemblies to update.

We're just going to allow it to do its thing. Okay. We've got the 575 for the thickness.

Great. Looks like some of these balloons got detached. We'll just reattach them.

That's totally fine. There we go. This one got detached.

We'll reattach it here. The dimensions of the lengths of some of these beams have changed. For instance, number 7, its length would have changed.

Also number 8,  its length would have changed. Let's go take a look at our first page with the orthographics. All right.

We've got no beams going into the ground. Perfect. We've got that new bracket location just where we want it.

All right. Our perspective is updated as well. Let's take a look at our section views.

We're also making sure that there aren't any broken references or any errors occurring. If there were, we would have to fix them. But so far, everything seems to be updating very cleanly.

Okay. Once you've done that, save your work. And one last thing we're going to do for this video is set all our decimal place dimensions into fractions.

So to do that, we'll go up here to options. And while in system options or rather while in document properties, apologies, go to units. And right now, for the length, the dual dimension length,  if we decide to show metric and imperial at the same place, and the angle, it's all setting the decimal place to two decimal places.

If we want to show more decimal places, say set it to five decimal places, we would simply click on the box, drop down, and go to one, two, three, four, five. Now, this is a very tight tolerance, and I would not recommend this for your designs. Staying between two and three decimal places is appropriate, especially if you're having someone else make your designs for you.

If we want our decimals to become fractions, we simply go to fractions column, and we only have two areas where we have the ability to edit that. And that's right here and right here. And if we set the fractions in pieces of halves, quarters, eighths,  sixteenths, thirty seconds, then it will take all of our dimensions in our drawing and round to the nearest fraction that meets that cutaway that we created.

So for instance, let's go ahead and leave this at zero. Oh, there we go. Let's go and leave that to two then.

We'll set this fraction to eight for length, close it out with okay. Now let's take a look at our framing sub-assembly. We now have fractions listed instead of decimal places.

This is great,  but it may be inaccurate or rather not as accurate as it could be. For instance, it didn't know how reconcile this very tight decimal place and this one here. Perhaps if we set our fractions to sixteenths or even thirty seconds, we might be able to change these.

Let's give that a try. Go back to units. Let's set this to 32.

Click okay. So make sure that updated the way that it's supposed to. Oh, looks like it's defaulting to eight.

We'll try one more time. There we go. It was happy with 16 and you can see that it altered this right here.

This is still a little bit tight of a decimal, so it wasn't able to alter that, but we know this is accurate and we'll just leave that okay for right now. But now that we can show fractions, it's a little more appropriate for working with carpentry or woodwork, which is what this design calls for. Beautiful.

There we go. Now, if we want to, we can go ahead, click on the dimension itself,  go to other, go to override units, and then we can round to the nearest fraction. If absolute accuracy is not quite important for that particular dimension and you just want to show what it is to the nearest fraction, go ahead and select this box.

Allow it to stay at 16,  although you could bring it to eight or four or even two,  and then you can see that fraction update. Close out the green check mark,  and we can go ahead and do that for this one as well. We'll click on the dimension,  go to other, override units, round to the nearest fraction, and there we go.

All right,  go ahead and save your work. Let's give it a second to update. Beautiful.

In the next video, we're going to add one more item and prepare ourselves for a rendering.