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Pattern component after source's View Rep - *NOT* the "Master"

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Message 1 of 5
SteveX82
418 Views, 4 Replies

Pattern component after source's View Rep - *NOT* the "Master"

In my neverending battle to find a way to turn off unneeded components in an assembly, I'm trying my hand at modifying component visibility with a custom View Rep. View reps seemed to pose fewer issues than LOD's (in that you can have a drawing and model open at the same time without a million error messages)......until I tried to make a pattern.

 

When first placing a new subassembly component into an assembly, it will automatically place in the "Last Saved" View Rep. Since certain parts may be invisible in my "skeletal" subassembly, this is ideal. HOWEVER, when I try to pattern this subassembly, all of the occurences absolutely insist on displaying at the "Master" View Rep. This makes no sense to me whatsoever and destroys yet another workflow at the 99% mark. I understand that I can change the view rep manually, but manual workarounds and corrections defeat the point of using iLogic to maniupate our models.

 

Is there any way on earth to avoid this? Am I the only CAD user who wants the simple ability to "turn off" an assembly component? iAssemblies are not an option due to the shear number of combinations of unneeded components.

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Message 2 of 5
mcgyvr
in reply to: SteveX82

pretty sure you can lock the master or any other view rep before you place your unneeded components and they won't be added to those locked view reps. You just need to remember to unlock them when you are done.

BTW what is an unneeded component and why do you have it in an assembly?

I never understand the crazy workflows some people try to do with Inventor.



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Message 3 of 5
SteveX82
in reply to: mcgyvr

The problems stems from the fact that patterned assembly components are inserted at their Master View Rep, which will contain all of the parts within the subassembly. Whether or not my custom View Rep is locked down will make no difference if that isn't the View Rep that is inserted.

 

An "unneeded" component could be extra hardware that may only  be used in certain configurations, or optional parts.

 

For example, imagine we're setting up a configurator to build some sort of radio controlled car. The car can have the following options:

 

1) Any of three different body types can be mounted to the chassis with either screws or clips. The bodies are so different that iParts are not an option, so we use the Component.Replace function with iMates to swap them. Both pieces of hardware must be in the assembly so that iLogic can use them as needed, but the unused hardware must somehow be "turned off" when not in use. It's not desireable to just delete (either automatically or manually) the unused hardware so that all iLogic functionality is retained after the car is configured. We may someday want to change that configuration so that it uses the alternate hardware, instead.

 

2) The car has optional front and rear bumper subassemblies, which in turn may or may not have lights mounted on them. I would have hoped that I could somehow remove the lights from the front bumper and activate it on the car. Whether I try using LOD's/suppression or View Reps/visibility, Inventor fights me every step of the way.

Message 4 of 5
SteveMDennis
in reply to: SteveX82

Steve,

 

 You are correct, there is no way to do this right now.  Let me ask you a question though, should the added instances in the pattern take on whatever visibility might be applied to the source instance(s) at the time of patterning or use the last saved view rep?  Remember that instances can be added/subtracted during an assembly compute due to equations, etc.

 

One other tangential question, if you are turning off unneeded components how does your BOM ever come out correct?

 

 



Steve Dennis
Sr. Principal Engineer
Inventor
Autodesk, Inc.

Message 5 of 5
SteveX82
in reply to: SteveMDennis

Either method would work for me so long as the patterned instances always matched the source.  If I change the LOD of a patterned source, all instances follow suit. I'd love to see view reps work the same way.

 

The BOM is correct because I disable visibility AND set the BOM structure to "Reference" for any parts I don't want (similar to how Component.IsActive works, only with visibility instead of suppression state). I'm really just trying to find a way to "exclude" components without creating an iAssembly table, as that table would need to be large enough to handle every possible combination of exclusions (ie, it'd be unmanageably huge).

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