About Best Practices

Design Accelerator Generators and Calculators

• Design Accelerator generators and calculators support assemblies and weldments. In drawing, sheet metal, or part environments, they are unavailable.
• Design Accelerator support of positional representations is limited to changes in the component only.
• You can promote and demote Design Accelerator components in the browser using the context menu. Ensure that the subassemblies that the Design Accelerator components are part of are grounded after demoting. The drag function is not available to promote or demote components in the browser.
• Design Accelerator components must be encapsulated in an assembly to apply kinematics. A component can be placed in a deep level subassembly. In that case, in-place edit its parent assembly before you start any Design Accelerator commands. Only entities inside a parent assembly can be selected in Design Accelerator commands
• A Design Accelerator assembly is used to organize components under an assembly. A single assembly can have only one component assembly.

Tips and tricks

• 3D grips + double-click: Most of the generators use 3D graphics for better orientation and workflow. Use the 3D preview to see the component in context with other parts of the assembly before creating it. Move the grip to change important dimensions of the displayed preview. Double-click the 3D grip to open the Edit dialog box and enter the dimension directly.

• Output units change: Double-click a result value to change units and enter new units.

• Items lists – drag: Drag in most of the generators and change the order of generated components. For example, in the Bolted Connection Generator, change the order of nuts and washers.