Are iAssemblies compatible with skeletal modeling?

[dgeise]

Hello,

I've been away from Inventor since 2007, and am familiar with skeletal (top-down) modeling workflow but not some of the newer features.  I'm halfway thru my 30-day trial run, so I'm under the gun to figure out if Inventor will work for my needs.

My requirements are to be able to create multiple variants of paramatricly-driven assemblies.  I thought iAssemblies were the answer, but I'm having problems.  Hopefully it's just my lack of formal training.  Here's the approach I've taken so far:

1. Created a multi-body skeleton part file that contains the parts I want to create.

(By the way, multi-solid parts are great, but my parts are basically sheet metal and it's disappointing that sheetmetal parts apparently don't support multiple solid parts - at least I couldn't figure out how to do it...  How is the user to create sheetmetal skeleton parts??  I had to work around the problem by not modeling the bends in order for the sheetmetal system to accept the parts...  Which is strange, I can derive multiple boties into sheetmetal, but not create them, perhaps I'm missing something here)

2. Converted the skeleton part into an iPart and created a few variants by suppressing various features, etc.

3. Derived various bodies into sheetmetal parts.  Added bends, features, etc.

4 Assemble sheetmetal parts into an assembly.  Grounded parts to the assembly origin, etc.

(So far I'm a little rusty but on semi-familiar ground, but beyond this is all new to me)

5. Attempted various ways to convert the assembly into an iAssembly.  The problem here is that the parameters I want to drive in the skeleton part don't appear to be exported 'up' to the iAssembly...

At this point I'm at a loss...  I can't find much info on skeletal modeling & iAssemblies on the internet, and the online help isn't much help either.  Is what I'm trying to do possible in Inventor?

Basically all I'm trying to do is create a family of assemblies that are parameter driven...  Can someone birefly sketch out the workfow if this is supported in Inventor?  And if it's not, suggest a path that is supported?

I think I'm just missing something here, so any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

--Dave

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Dave,

Welcome back! For item #1, indeed on 2015 and earlier, Sheet Metal does not support Multi-Solid Body creation. We are aware of the limitation. You may want to sign up Inventor Beta to see some enhancements in this area. If you are interested, please send me an email and I will send you a link to sign up.

Regarding passing parameters within an assembly, actually it can be done easily in iLogic. If you have specific example to show the design intent, there are many iLogic experts here to help.

Many thanks!

[dgeise]

Hi Johnson,

Thanks for the reply.  I will contact you via email re: participation in the beta.

However, the original question still stands - am I going about acheiving my goals wrong or am what I'm trying to do not realizable in Inventor?

If it is possible, can anyone suggest a workflow that will support parametrric (table driven) families of assemblies?

Thanks in advance for help anyone can provide (?),

-Dave