Inventor 2012 Frame Generator Issue

[SoulAsasin]

Hello.

I have a problem with the frame generator. We use custom extruded aluminium profiles in our designs. I have published some of these profiles in the content center. The problem is that Inventor saves every part on different names. For example "(standard name)00001.ipt", "(standard name)00002.ipt","(standard name)00003.ipt", etc. If I have two profiles with the same lengths, and they are saved as different file names, they appera in my BOM separatly, which confuses our purchasing department and assembly team. Is there any posibility to make inventor save same lengths of profiles to the same file?

Thanks for the help.

[BarryZA]

http://inventortrenches.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/understanding-autodesk-inventor-frame.html

good luck, it looks fairly involved.

[SoulAsasin]

Thank you.

I will try it.

[BLHDrafting]

The BOM groups (rolls up lines) based on the Part Number. So regardless of what the member files names are, if the Part Numbers are the same then they will get rolled up into 1 line. This is problematic for Frame Generator members though as there could be several different lengths of the same member and the BOM will attempt to roll these up into 1 line and will show a yellow highlight to the rows where the BOM is confused because there is conflicting data.

To get around this problem I added 1 extra column to each Family I use in the Structural Shapes Category. I called this column FG_DESC. It is formatted with the same properties and data as is the Description column except that I have left the length off (generally iproperty G_L). It is then mapped to Inventor Property Custom.FG_DESCThen in each of the BOM lines that I need to roll up add into the Description cell =<FG_DESC> <G_L> and into the Part Number cell =<Description>. This then makes the Part Number values the same and the roll up can continue. You could put a 1 in the Part Number cell for each of the same BOM lines that you want to roll up, then a 2 in the others. It doesn't matter what you add as long as there is something for the BOM to roll the lines up with.

This approach can be bit tedious at times on large frames but it works for me and I have never found an easier solution. Also as I use the Part Number in the IDW Parts List it does mean that I have to delete some of these values to avoid double data being shown.

I have added a request to the IdeaStation that the line rollup should be configured to work of any column, not just the Part Number.

Hope that helps.