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Drawings & Multi-Body iPart

24 REPLIES 24
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Message 1 of 25
MikahB
1651 Views, 24 Replies

Drawings & Multi-Body iPart

I've been working on a project that involves fasteners.  For the sake of discussion, imagine a very special Nut and Washer combination where all their "specialness" is in the mating components of the two parts, and each washer is specific to each nut.  Because there are so many dependent dimensions between the two pieces and so many variations (every metric and SAE standard fasteners size plus many special ones) an iParrt has proven a robust want to model this pair - I only have about 60 rows at present but will very likely end up with something like 400 rows.

 

The struggle comes every time I have to produce shop drawings.  Each piece can be sufficiently detailed on one sheet, and everything works fine for the first part I set up.  I use Solid Body Visibility to only show the part I need and away I go.  Trouble is, If I make a new drawing as a copy of an existing one and then change to another iPart, the Visibility checkboxes no longer produce any effect.  They act like they are going to, but they do nothing.

 

I have tried View Representations that isolate each part which would be a perfect solution, but of course it does not work in the Drawing environment for some unknown-to-me reason.

 

It is a big waste of my time to have to keep redrawing these things every time - I am seeking other workflows that might be more reliable. Because there are so many special cases, dimension tables are not a good option.  Any other suggestions?

Mikah Barnett
All Angles Design
Product Design Suite Ultimate 2014
Windows 7 Professional x64
Intel i7-3770k @ 4.5GHz
32GB DDR3-2400 RAM
GeForce GTX 670 4GB
24 REPLIES 24
Message 2 of 25
pcrawley
in reply to: MikahB

Alternative suggestion: Use iLogic.

 

iParts are OK when you have 40 variations and a limited number of permutations of the design, but 400, or 4000, (or 135,000 as we had on one job) then you are going to get into a mess.

 

When you use "Place iLogic" in an assembly, it actually creates a copy of your source part.  This can present its own problems, but a single iLogic driven part can hide/show bodies, change dimensions, suppress/unsuppress features, even "build" part numbers (or other iProperties) based on the selections made during its configuration.  What you can end up with is a single part with as many configurations as you could possibly need, without a table, and each instance is unique - therefore editable in isolation from all others.

 

 

Peter
Message 3 of 25
MikahB
in reply to: pcrawley

Thanks, Peter for the suggestion. So far, iPart has proven more than up to the task of modeling the parts and variations, but the drawing environment is a whole other story.
Mikah Barnett
All Angles Design
Product Design Suite Ultimate 2014
Windows 7 Professional x64
Intel i7-3770k @ 4.5GHz
32GB DDR3-2400 RAM
GeForce GTX 670 4GB
Message 4 of 25
pcrawley
in reply to: MikahB

Sorry - I misunderstood.  When you said "I am seeking other workflows that might be more reliable. Because there are so many special cases, dimension tables are not a good option." I presumed you meant that the whole workflow needed a rethink.

Peter
Message 5 of 25
johnsonshiue
in reply to: MikahB

Hi! iPart is not yet capable of configuring Design View ot part level. For these invisible solid bodies, do they serve any purpose in the iPart member? Or, do they need to be present in certain members? You can use Delete Face -> Lump option to remove unwanted body and the feature can be controlled on a per member basis. Would it work for you?

Thanks!

 



Johnson Shiue (johnson.shiue@autodesk.com)
Software Test Engineer
Message 6 of 25
MikahB
in reply to: johnsonshiue

Thanks, Johnson but yes, both solid bodies are required.  I just need to show one at a time when making drawings.

 

There seems to be drawings functionality that attempts to address this (being able to Select Solid Body Visibility per View) but it's broken and only works intermittently.

 

I have considered making two iParts for each assembly - one showing each body - but then I'm duplicating data in two rows which seems like a fantastic way to cause problems as well as doubling the number of rows.

Mikah Barnett
All Angles Design
Product Design Suite Ultimate 2014
Windows 7 Professional x64
Intel i7-3770k @ 4.5GHz
32GB DDR3-2400 RAM
GeForce GTX 670 4GB
Message 7 of 25
MikahB2
in reply to: MikahB

Ha, here I am nearly 2 years later working on this again and searching for suggestions only to find my old complaining thread.

 

Sure hope that with Inventor 2017:

 

- Multi-Body parts support View Representations in the Drawings Environment, and/or

- When you Replace Model Reference (or change iPart member) in an existing drawing, the Solids Visibility toggles actually function

 

It would also be nice (though less critical) if the Names you give to Solid Bodies in your Part carried through to Drawings.  That's a minor niggle, though compared to the others.

Product Design Suite Ultimate 2017

Windows 10 x64

i7-4790k @ 4.0GHz
GeForce GTX 970
16GB RAM
250GB SSD
Message 8 of 25
rdyson
in reply to: MikahB2

I've no problem with using view reps in drawings
Haven't need to us Replace Model so can't speak to that


PDSU 2016
Message 9 of 25
MikahB2
in reply to: rdyson

Using View Representations on a Part, or on an Assembly?

 

They work fine for me with assemblies, but with Parts I only ever see "Master" available in the Representation drop-down.

Product Design Suite Ultimate 2017

Windows 10 x64

i7-4790k @ 4.0GHz
GeForce GTX 970
16GB RAM
250GB SSD
Message 10 of 25
rdyson
in reply to: MikahB2

Yes Multi-Body Parts

 

Capture.PNG



PDSU 2016
Message 11 of 25
MikahB2
in reply to: rdyson

Still battling this, frustration climbing.

 

Rdyson - in your screenshot above, I can make everything work just like you have showing which is EXACTLY what I want to do.  Unfortunately, as soon as I switch Model State from "Active Factory Member" to any individual iPart, I lose all the View Representations except Master which leaves me right back where I started - trying to turn off Solid Visibility per View which is unstable and unworkable.

 

In the example above are you set to Active Factory Member?

 

EDIT: Added screenshots below.  If I switch from Active Factory Member to any individual Member, I lose the View Reps.  If I then switch back to Active Factory Member, I do not get them back - still can only see Master.

Product Design Suite Ultimate 2017

Windows 10 x64

i7-4790k @ 4.0GHz
GeForce GTX 970
16GB RAM
250GB SSD
Message 12 of 25
rdyson
in reply to: MikahB2

Sorry, I've never actually used iParts. Maybe someone else can help.


PDSU 2016
Message 13 of 25
Jacob
in reply to: johnsonshiue

Thank you! This helped me remove my solid body template part from my sheet metal multibody. Very useful so it doesn't show up in my drawing views. 

 

Originally I thought the "Export Object" check would do the same thing for ipart file generation but it appears to not do that.

 

Jacob

Message 14 of 25
MechMachineMan
in reply to: MikahB2

So what you are saying is that you essentially combined a bolt and a washer into a single multibody iPart so that it's only one file you have to place?

 

Therefore, every bolted connected you have is 1 file, and the total number of files = total number of bolted connections?

 

 

How about this alternative:

 

Instead of iParts, use the nut and the washer as an iAssembly (or even just an assembly).

As it's 2 SEPARATE PARTS you want to show, the assembly workflow is much more likely to support this, but the parts are still grouped together in the assembly to make modelling and documentation easier.


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Justin K
Inventor 2018.2.3, Build 227 | Excel 2013+ VBA
ERP/CAD Communication | Custom Scripting
Machine Design | Process Optimization


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Message 15 of 25
johnsonshiue
in reply to: Jacob

Hi Jacob,

 

Many thanks for your feedback! Do you mind elaborating what you meant by "Export Objects" not working on iPart?

Thanks again!

 



Johnson Shiue (johnson.shiue@autodesk.com)
Software Test Engineer
Message 16 of 25
Jacob
in reply to: johnsonshiue

autopic1.png

 

I tried using the "Export Object" check to control what objects are exported by the "Generate Files" command here:

 

autopic2.png

 

 

This way some bodies could be 'ignored' when making the children files. If the selection of what can be 'ignored' could change on per each ipart that would be most ideal.

 

Using the remove lump feature at least allows me to remove some bodies across all iparts. For the original post that may work also but they would have to use the remove lump command many times and turn the features on and off per each line item.

 

 

 

Message 17 of 25
swalton
in reply to: MikahB2

If you look at the member ipart files, are the design views from the factory file present?  

Steve Walton
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Message 18 of 25
Jacob
in reply to: swalton

This is what a member part file looks like from the browser. Is that what you meant?

 autopic3.png

Message 19 of 25
chris
in reply to: MikahB

This may sound like a silly question... and I just want to make sure I'm understanding the workflow, but on anything involving... say more than a few parts, why would you choose an "assembly" of parts to be modeled/shown with multi-bodies? Don't get me wrong, I do multibody modeling every day; when I show O-Rings on parts when I need surfaces to be different. My extent of multibody is mainly for export when sending a file to 3D Max or MODO to be rendered... but for assemblies, I just model each part as a file and constrain them? or am I missing what you're saying?

Message 20 of 25
swalton
in reply to: Jacob

Jacob,

 

 

I was assuming you were trying to control body visibility with Design Reps in the part file.  If that is not your intended workflow, disregard my comments.  Also I running an old version of Inventor so I may not have all the functionality that you do.

 

Expand out the view node and see if the design views you created in the master part are making it through the derive process to the member files.  If they don't come from the master to the child, the drawing won't be able to display them.

 

Do you have entries in your iPart table for each view rep?

 

I'm guessing that design view reps are not part of the ipart process..  At least, I can't find a way to control them in Inventor 2014.  Newer versions might have more options.

Steve Walton
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