Sketch Block Patterns - Break References?

[jgore]

I am in the process of modeling a simple hand.

Hand - Finger - Joints - Joint 1 to 3

I am trying to use sketch blocks and a pattern of a finger and associates sketch blocks as individual joints in the fingers to create the assembly,
and I can work with this and get everything to come out right, but when I make an edit to a joint in finger 1, the changes propogate to all of the other parts in the assembly...

I have tried to break the pattern relation, explode al of the blocks, break and or lock references,,checked the references option and so forth....


How do I stop this ghost editing of all of my parts, when all I want to do is make a simple assembly hiearchy of sketch blocks and destroy the associativity or instance ID so I can make changes to individual parts, and not the entire group of parts?

I will try to post pictures and answer questions...
Thanks in advance,
Jamie

[tnik]

haven't worked with blocks much, but maybe you actually need 14 different joint blocks in order to have each one act differently.

[jgore]

I have tried similar techniques, but they seem to be time consuming and the results tend to also be close to the same when I make a large hierarchial assem that is empty.
Weird. I am on Win2k SERVER edition and not the Professional edition.
Maybe that has something to do with it.
Any more ideas?
Jamie

[jgore]

what I also just discovered is: if you make several solid bodies in a part document and save each as a seperate file, it tends to want to behave the way I want it to....
it just seems to be out of the way, in terms of a feature or recommended process for large assemblies....imagine trying to do this on 1000's of parts????
Jamie
anyone else have anything to offer?

[tnik]

hopefully someone with more knowledge will chime in, but maybe you can use table driven sketches?