iLogic, iAssembly... I know what I want it to do... can I make it happen?

[Anonymous]

Ok folks... I'm pretty new to customization... and by "pretty new" I mean I really haven't done it before.

I've got something I want to do and after messing with it for 2 days now... and reading through the forums here... I'm thinking I can ALMOST accomplish what I want... but maybe not quite. MAybe one of you can offer some advice.

I am working on a water plant project... there is a LOT of flanges and while we were building the sub-assembly models... we didn't put in any flange studs. But we have decided we want to so we can ensure we're ordering the right qty. (All stainless... expensive to over-order... international... so it'll delay the project heavily if we under-order)

I would love to be able to insert a sub-assembly of studs, washers and nuts at each flange location. I'd love to be able, when inserting the sub-assembly, to select the flange size and class from a list, enter the face to face length of the flange assembly and then, in the background, have the right sizes and quantity of studs washers and nuts... in the right "pattern" come into the assembly.

I'm really hung up on... getting the flange size to drive the selection of parts in the assembly (which I'm pretty sure I can do... not sure how... but I think I could figure it out) and mostly on getting the "length" of the stud right.

I have a great "stud" iPart that has the flange face to face dimension as a "fixed_length" parameter, a custom entry... which then figures out the overall length of the stud rounded up to the nearest eigth inch.

Am I wrong in thinking that I can do most all of this... pretty easily... except the "length" part?

There are a LOT of flange length options in the plant and haveing to manually create every eigth inch length option for every stud size will be... daunting, I think.

Any suggestions??

Thanks,

ChipR

ps: I thought about the easiest option of just authoring the stud into a CC component and using the bolted connection generator... but for some reason... it won't follow the pattern of flange holes. Flange models may not use a "pattern" and were all created before I got here.