Part Document Automation Objects

Legend Collection Abstract object Object Click arrow to expand chart Click arrow to return to previous chart

The PartDocument object aggregates, or includes, the part tree structure starting with the Part object located at the top of the part specification tree. Among these objects, we find first objects and collections you can also find in the part specification tree. These objects are:

• The three planes XY, YZ, and ZX you can retrieve from the OriginElements collection using the Part's OriginElements property
• The AxisSystems collection
• The OrderedGeometriclaSets collection
• Tthe 3D elements you can create as reference to position your 3D objects and stored in a GeometricElements collection you can retrieve using the GeometricElements property
• The bodies you create, starting with the main body and stored in the Bodies collection you can retireve using the Part's Bodies property. These bodies contains the part's geometry
• The hybrid bodies you create, stored in the HybridBodies collection.

In addition, the Part object aggregates:

• The constraints you can set to your 3D objects and stored in the Constraints collection you can retrieve using the Part's Constraints property
• The relations between parameters stored in a Relations collection you can retrieve using the Part's Relations property
• The parameters stored in a Parameters collection you can retrieve usin the Part's Parameters property
• The factories: a ShapeFactory object to create shapes, an HybridShapeFactory object to create hybrid shapes, and an InstanceFactory object to instantiate either User Defined Features or a Power Copies. You can retrieve the first two factories using the Part's ShapeFactory and  HybridShapeFactory properties respectively. You can retrieve the InstanceFactory object thanks to the Part's GetCustomerFactory method as follows, assuming Part1 is the Part object of the active Part document:

  Dim myFactory As InstanceFactory
  Set myFactory = Part1.GetCustomerFactory("InstanceFactory")

• The functional annotations and tolerancing objects aggregated under the AnnotationSets and UserSurfaces collections.

The Bodies collection includes Body objects, one being the main body returned by the MainBody property of the collection. The part has in addition a current body and a current shape, returned or set using the CurrentBody and the CurrentShape properties of the Part object respectively. The current body is the body in which a new shape is added when using the ShapeFactory object. The current shape is the shape of the current body after which a new shape is added in the specification tree when using the shape factory. You then need to make current the appropriate body and shape before using the shape factory.

The other collections can be classified in two categories:

1. The collections that only contains objects and have methods to retrieve and possibly remove them, but leave the dedicated factories for object creation, such as Sketches, GeometricElements, and Shapes
2. The collections that also have methods to create the objects they contain, such as Constraints, Relations, and Parameters.

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