editing parts

[ebmanne]

I needed some IPT's of small gears and located some on the 'Stock Drive Products and Sterling Instrument" (aka SPP/SI) web site.The miter gears came as a pair set at 90 deg. to each other ready to insert into a assembly. My understanding was that these 3D cads drawings can not be edited. When I tried to just delete one of the gears by deleting various part of the drawing Inventor just locked up. Since I needed some individual gears I removed one of the pair by opening it's drawing from the browser bar and using the "edit solid" command on the base, I set a work plane between the boss and the gear then used the split command to remove the gear side then repeated the split command and removed the boss. After this I was able to delete the surface that defined the tooth.This left me with a single gear.
Questions:
The drawings can obviously be sliced and diced but I'm assuming that the sketch can't be edited? Is this right
Are the bits that have been removed gone or just not visible and are they linked back to the parent part.

Any ideas on imported 3D part editing would be helpful.

P.S. the SPP/SI web site has a very large number of 3D cad drawings, It's worth looking at. The gear drawings are complete drawings not just Pitch Circle drawings.

[Ron Oldenbeuving]

Did you try Charles Bliss' Transmission Page (http://www.cbliss.com/inventor/Parts/PowerTransmission/index.htm)? Design Accelerator also has bevel gears (if your running IV9, and you're a subscription customer, a preview version is available at Autodesk Subscription Centre (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=613372)).

As an aside, you may want to check your import options for importing step files, and make sure you have it set to import solids and import multi-lump solids as assemblies, this may help you .

Imported step or sat files come in as "dumb" (non-parametric) solids, so there is in fact no sketches or features which can be edited. New features and sketches can be added to the part. It is possible to move faces and lengthen or shorten dumb solids using the edit solid command.

[ebmanne]

I have the bevel gear files from the cbliss site, but they are to big and scaling with a derived part didn't get me what I wanted. The gears I have work very well, I was just looking for info to scratch an itch that this subject has given me. The SPP/PI website has a very large selection of parts for FREE. I'm not trying to sell anyone on them or there products it's just a good source of 3D cad drawings.
THANKS!