Newbie question: partially defined parts in an assembly?

[Narayanan.D]

Hello,

I am a newbie to Inventor, who do not even know the appropriate terms (jargon) to search for. Hence I am asking this in this forum. I am ready to learn through documentation and other resources. I just need to know the term to serch for.

Basically I am evaluating to model rebars in Inventor. Rebars come in predefined shapes - for example a "L" bar will have two dimensions  (marked as A, E and R).  The shape definition is fixed by a standard (like BS:8666) and the values for dimensions A, E and R are provided when it is instantiated as a part in an assembly.

I created an assembly as follows:

1. Created a new part containing just a solid cube.
2. Created a part for the above rebar by sweeping a circle along path which resembelled the above bar.
3. Created an assembly and inserted the cube as 1st part.
4. Inserted the L bar part as 2nd part
5. Inserted another L bar as 3rd part.
6. modified the 3rd part's diameter and found it updates the other L bar as well.

My questions:

1. Is there any way for me to create the part for L bar without giving any fixed values for the sweep path and sweep profile diameter and use it in assembly?
2. If the above question doesn't has a solution, then is there any way for me to change one instance of the part to change while other instances of it doesnt get affected (the behaviour said in step 6 of above should not happen).

Many thanks for your time,

Narayanan

[BarryZA · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure why you created the cube?

Anyway, open an assembly and click place from content centre and choose a ramdom bolt. click on your workspace and you will be presented with a table, asking you which length of bolt and which thread size you want.

This is called an ipart and you can make your own one with your part.

Failing that, if I only need a couple of configurations, I save copy as of my original and edit the dimensions, so now you have 2 independant parts that will not affect each other.

[JDMather]

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@Narayanand wrote:

.... do not even know the appropriate terms (jargon) to search for. Hence I am asking

Narayanan

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Search on the term iPart as indicated.

What version of Inventor are you using (2014)?

Someone here can create a simple iPart for you in minutes to show you the basic process.

[Narayanan.D]

Thanks for the info. I created the cube just as a matter of practice, but absolutely unnecessary for this question.

I tried iPart and it works well as I expected, but with one side effect. It creates a part file for each change in the dimenion that I make while inserting the part. Is there any way I can delete those part files, but still the part inserted in assembly still works? Like binding in Xref in AutoCAD...

Thanks again.

[Narayanan.D]

@JDMather, I am using Inventor 2014. Thanks for your info as well.