PART REPRESENTATIONS

[swood816]

Hello,

I am trying to take a 3" sq 11 gauge tube that will have a pie shaped cut out of the tube leaving only one wall remaining. The tube then will be bent until the two sections are mated and welded. The tube is going to be processed on a tube laser to have the features cut out. 

The problem is when I bend the tube in inventor I need a straight version of the tube for cad/cam programming and fabrication and not have it affect the bend feature that is placed in the weldment. I do no want to derive a part and save a seperate version in the vault. I would like it all to be in one model. 

I try to create a view representation and name it "straight" and suppress the bend feature in the new representation but it changes in both representations of the part.

Is there a way to have two different view representations of the part (suppressed bend feature, unsuppressed bend feature) that I can switch between?

[waynehelley]

'View representations' can only be used to save camera angles or turn the visability of parts off the assembly environment. They are a bit useless in the part environment.

You sound like you want to create a 'Level of Detail' within the part environment and use it to make a new configuration where the feature is Suppressed. This is not possible. Level of Details can only be used in the Assembly environment to Suppress PARTS (not features)

I don't think what you want is possible without having two seperate part files.

[waynehelley]

You could create an ipart which contains two different configurations of the part. The only problem is that the ipart file will then generate a member file for each part. So you would then be stuck with 3 files

[swood816]

The last attemp we tried to create parameters in a derived version of the part and linked all the new paramaters back to the original part in which then the part could be driven by the parameters and selected in the IDW. which one we wanted to view. 

The only problem that we are having with that is that if any new features are added they would not change in the derive part unless those parameters were also added and linked as well. Modification of the current features would be fine.

I can see a lot of issues created from this if something was changed on one but not linked to the other incorrect parts would be manufactured. 

Thanks for your input.