Face based assembly symmetry check.

[colt]

Hello, I am on sw2018 I have an assembly with about 300 parts and want to check if it is fully symmetric about the center plane.

My first attempt was to run a basic assembly level symmetry check. This did not meet my needs because if a symmetrical part had its symmetry plane coincident with the symmetry check plane it would be flagged as asymmetric.

Next I made a new dummy assembly and inserted two copies of my real assembly. Then I applied a symmetry mate to these two assemblies. This was better because it removed the false positives and only showed truly asymmetric parts. However, I then have to run symmetry check on each flagged part to find the actual problem.

I noticed that running symmetry check on a part allows color option of coloring unique faces (which is what i really want for assembly). So I saved my dummy assembly as a part thinking I could run a check to find all problem faces all in one go. Unfortunately, symmetry check does not work on multi-body parts. Sigh.

I tried saving my real assembly as a part and creating an assembly mirror opposite hand version. Then did file compare geometry check between these two files, but it never completed and crashed.

I tried creating assembly cavity using the opposite hand version as the tool on the normal part. Got an error that said the model was empty even though I can visually see that there should be leftover geometry.

I am going to get through this by running a check on each flagged part individually, but wondering if there is a trick I missed? I wonder if there is a way to save out an assembly to surfaces only (like save as part with exterior faces, except keeping all faces).