Newbie rules

[SSMark]

The lead here at my company declared that there will be no mirroring, period. Ever.
He / she did not indicate mirroring parts/assemblies/ features, he/she included everything.
The rationale seems to be that it messes up the vault with uneditable parts.

My question is: Does Inventor Mirror part have a way to break the associativity with the original part so that if I need to I can make
edits to one without affecting the other? My 2nd question is: can I mirror a part without he/she knowing I have because there is no trace or associativity with
the original part or assembly?

[Pierre Marcotte]

As far as I know, a mirrored part can be disassociated with its parent part, but it won't have the features in the browser, just a solid body. If your boss knows a little about Inventor, he'll see the browser and know right away. We've never had any problems with mirrored parts in the vault, but we don't tend to modify our parts very much compared to other companies, either.

Rough, man.

[mflayler]

I can understand the mirroring of parts in an assembly to create the LH RH interaction and why that may be troublesome to users in a large environment where no clearly defined process or standard exists.

Not mirroring features is either a lack of clearly stating the rule or the ignorance of the command to the OP's lead.

You could do a Save Copy and Replace command and then do a Mirror about its plane of symmetry inside the new file. No one will ever really know there and there is no link to the original file. I am sure your lead just wants to avoid the Derived Part link that the Assembly Mirror creates.

[Mauri12345]

Open mirrored .ipt. Right click mirrored feature on model tree and choose "Suppress link with Base Component" or "Break link with Base Component".

When mirroring assemblies, this has to be done to all parts one by one. I would suggest that mirror components is allowed, but only when link is supressed. With supressed link, mirror can be updated, if needed. If link is breaked, this is impossible.

Other way to mirror components is to use mirror feature inside part. This is the way you can preserve feature tree and will be able to modify mirror components original features without modifying original part.