our company is still not using it for real projects. Here's why......
(Sorry if this has been covered but I couldn't find it anywhere)
I thought Inventor was pretty useless for top-down design until Drew showed
me the skeletal design process, and that finally opened up a potential of
use for us, so I feel we have to stick with skeletal design process for our
type of work.
We design machinery that is different each time but, of course, like most,
we reuse a lot of parts or sun-assemblies, for example, a plate for a 1-1/4"
pillow block (at the most basic level).
The thing we (or I guess "I") can't figure out is how do we include that
plate for a 1-1/4" pillow block in dozens of different machines without
redrawing it each time. I think this must be a common problem but I haven't
seen a solution.
Okay a few options as I see them.
1. Use iFeatures to store often used sketches. Fine, but sometimes that
re-usable part is more than just one part. Sometimes it's an assembly of
many parts, that you later have to build onto.
2. You could derive your assembly at some point into a part. Then derive
again this only surfaces, make sketches on those surfaces. Then derive parts
from that, then create another assembly, place the original assembly, and
the new parts created from the new master sketches into the new assembly.
Wow. Seems like a lot of work if the part is just a plate. Plus it would
make a mess of BOM like nobody's business.
3. Derive that part into the master sketch. Fine but I can't move that part,
the program just aligns the workplanes and that won't help. Sure would be
cool, if I had constraints in parts.
4. Create an assembly. Place the master sketch, then place the standard
parts. Now what? I can't derive this assembly to create a new part because
the sketches dissappear when you derive the assembly.
5. iMaster technique (credit this newsgroup) : Good in some applications,
but "I" don't know where the parts are going to go until I create the
sketch, so I can't just constrain the parts to the workplanes because I have
no idea relative to the workplanes.
6. Redraw a quick represention of the already created parts (from third
parties like cbliss.com or parts we had previously created), so that the
skeletal approach still updates properly. This seems to be the only workable
approach but too time-consuming to make it worth it. (why should I have to
redraw something I've already drawn a dozen times when the drawings are
already in Inventor?)
I must be missing something obvious because everyone seems to use Inventor
on a daily basis for real work, but for us without the ability to make a
skeletal master with parts that I can reference with other sketches that I
can then derive into other parts, we can't use Inventor,.......... yet.
Sign....back to AutoCAD
thanks all.....
enric ribas