iAssembly of Frame

[piotiwa994]

Hello,

how can i make an iAssembly for a frame made in frame generator. I have created an iPart of the sketch and it`s workin, but when it comes to iAssembly it doesn`t. 

I have made a second line with values and it doesnt work.

Secend question, do I have to create an i Part in order to make an iAssembly, can`t I just make iAssembly in main Assembly so that it would work?

[pcrawley]

Depending on your understanding of how iParts get created (and the version of Inventor you are using) this could be a long and potentially painful experience. 

There are 2 workflows you can employ and understanding the difference will be the key to things working - and things failing.

1. If you create an assembly, create your layout part (frame skeleton) in-place, then turn the layout part ito an iPart, you should find everything works OK.
2. If you create an assembly, then place in your iPart-layout, the Frame Generator parts are going to fail when you try selecting a new row in the iPart table.

Without getting too deep, second method places a new part into your model each time you change the active row in the iPart.  Each time you change the active row, you actually remove one IPT and replace it with another one.  Frame generator relies on the layout part to be derived into each frame member - so when you change the active iPart member, the frame will remain linked to the member it was created from.

In the 1st method described above, you are building the Frame on the iPart Factory.  So when you change the active member, the iPart Factory is still the current IPT linked to the Frame.

Like I said, it can quickly turn ugly if you get it wrong.  In my experience, you would be better advised to keep iPart skeletons and Frame Generator models well away from eachother.  I would make your skeleton editable using Parameters (have a look at multi-value parameters if you have some standard sizes you need to work with).  If the design really is tabular (i.e It suits a table approach) then I would create some iLogic in the skeleton part that lets you pick a model-type and it resets all the appropriate parameters for you.