Building assembly via form

[drguitarum2005]

Can everyone please help explain or offer suggestions for the best work flow to achieve what I'm trying to do?

My company makes vehicles, think of a standard car like what you drive to work (to make it easier to think about). We may have x number of engine choices, y number of front axle, z number of rear axle, and many many many many more options. I want to be able to, via a form that pops up (either prompting for user input, an iAssembly form, or reading a spreadsheet), assemble a brand new vehicle. I want the parts to come in where they should (frame comes in, axle come in attached to frame, body comes in sitting on top of frame, seats come in positioned inside body) etc.

In my bosses former world (Catia), EVERYTHING had x,y,z coordinates assigned so everything was brought in on an absolute coordinate system so everything was positioned. I know I can emulate that by drawing components off of the sketch origin but I don't like that method really...seems so crude and unfriendly and hard to change. I know I can set up iMates but so far iMates have been less than reliable and there are several conflicts that come up with those. I know I can also set up one giant master assembly that has EVERY POSSIBLE component in it and turn it into an iAssembly but I believe iAssemblies have a maximum number of "fields", not to mention when we're talking 500+ components, we're talking exponentially more spreadsheet lines to cover every possible combination.

I know I'm not the only one in a similar industry so how does everyone here do it? We're just coming into 3D from AutoCAD so I'm open to any suggestions at all!

Thanks,