I haven't played with it yet in Shark - so I'm guessing here

... but doesn't copy/paste dump part history (keeping filesize small - but losing parametric adaption), whilst reference retains history (and hence bigger filesize) and of course sandboxes your referenced component securely outside your working file.

Interesting question - so I'm keen to read people's answers !

Where do we find Reference - is it a Shark only tool?



Martin.

Hi -

No - I routinely dump the history as the face tools are so amazingly powerful in Shark

History sometimes gets in your way more than it helps you

(life can be like that )

Try it !

- dump history, (remove links)

- edit>simplify your geometry (this describes your geometry in the simplest terms it can)

- verify > check objects (for errors)

- compact file (gets rid of cruft)

Doing that on my current file just reduced from 50Mb to 5. OK - I don't have a live history - but with this simple geometry, it really doesn't matter ... I just use face ops

They originated in Autocad as x-refs, external references. People use them where there's a component common to a family of parts that all use the common part in assemblies. The family of parts will all refer to the common file, and if that's changed, the change propagates through all of the assembly drawings. Reference gives associativity across files. Thinking on it, it could be arranged to do it in limited ways with reference files in other formats, too, which could give some associativity across applications. I just cobbled together a test that attempted to create a feature using a boolean with a reference solid, but that failed. The modified part updates within Shark, but it won't participate in booleans. More research needed to understand the conditions.