Hi Adrian! 

Exploded objects keep the same coordinate system as the assembly. 

For example below, I have exploded a CAD assembly made of 4 cylinder volumes:

As you can see, Object 7 coordinate system is shared with the assembly:

If you make this object as a detector, you can read the coordinates of each facet of the object. Would that help?

Sandrine

Hi Sandrine.  Thank you for the reply.

This is Jo here - I have been logging in with Adrian's details, but now I can log in as myself!

Can you explain to me how to make an object a detector?  I tried ticking the 'Object is a Detector' box but it didn't make any difference.  And why would doing that make the co-ordinates available?

What I am puzzled about is why the Source Tube object that I created had to be placed in what seems to be an arbitrary position.  Is there any way I can place it relative to the parent CAD object?  I tried to give it co-ordinates that were relative to Object 1, but that didn't seem to work either.

Best Regards

Jo

Hi Jo,

Thanks for your follow-up here!

It seems like the issue might be that while you have exploded your assembly into consituent parts, each sub part's local origin may not coincide with your anticipated origin for the part itself. As Sandrine mentioned, all of the sub-components will have their local axes aligned with the origin of the assembly.

You can visualize where the local origin is for Object 11 by using the 'Draw Local Axis' settings in the Object Properties:


 

In Sandrine's previous post, she showed that the highlighted object was Object 7 (only the top-left cylinder) -- however, the origin for Object 7 is centered on the bottom-right cylinder. So, any object that is placed coincident with Object 7's reference point (by using the Reference Object parameter) will actually be placed coincident with the location of the drawn axis.

As for the workaround, making an object a detector will allow you to view the coordinates of the facets of the object in the Detector Viewer window. The detail to note here is that you can only view Detector Viewer results with objects set as detectors using the Text tab:

It won't quite give you the exact coordinates of your object using this method, though. To get the exact position of your sub-part, I think you'd need to go back into the CAD program that created your assembly and obtain the component's position with respect to the assembly global origin in there.

Please let us know if you have any further questions here, and I hope you have an excellent weekend!

~ Angel

Hello

Thank  you for that explanation - I have re-checked the co-ordinates that I used, and it now makes sense.

Best Regards

Jo