Publications are used in CATIA Assembly design and are particularly useful when it comes to contextual design with links. Think of the primary function of a publication as an intermediate level between a source element and a contextually designed part.
Let me use an analogy I use with my students: imagine you
were designing a luxury motor
yacht. A large proportion of the
interior fittings will be using the hull surface of the boat as a limit. The hull is subsequently redesigned and the
surface replaced. If you have never had
a situation like this, let me tell you what happens: when you open each contextually
designed part, they will tell you that their contextual references cannot be
synchronised. You then have to manually
replace the reference - replace boat hull surface one with surface two - a very
long drawn out process.
So how does a publication help? If the boat hull surface was published,
because the contextually designed parts are looking at the publication not the
actual reference, you only have to modify the link once by changing what the
publication is pointing to in the source document, not each and every
contextually designed part.
Other advantages include:
- The publication of an element can be easily recognised
- they are in a separate folder in the spec tree - this also helps finding
elements for constraining.
- Published elements can be swapped out with other
elements with the same name - complete parts can be swapped with others and
then update assemblies accordingly.
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