T&P - trimmable fittings?

[crazyjpeters]

I'm working on creating a number of Plastic / HDPE fittings and pipe.  I've dimensioned them to catalog sizes; however, when fusing these things together in the field, I know they can be trimmed quite a bit if the confines are tight.

Does anyone know if there is a way to publish these parts so that T&P can reduce the length of the fitting automatically?

[cbenner]

Tube & Pipe cannot trim a fitting like you mention.  Are you referring to a fusion welding operation?  I've never found a good way to account for material loss in this or fusion socket welding.  It certainly would be great if you could set some parameters for material loss.

Maybe add this to the Idea Station?  http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideastation/idb-p/v1232

[salariua · Accepted solution]

There is a way.. but you will have overlapping geometry. As long as you don't mind that, the pipe will report correct length (before fusion) and the route distances will be correct (after fusion) but you will have overlapping geometry. 

In order to do that you need to author the fittings and specify an engagement that will overlap and a Min distance of 100%.

I have authored a socket coupling attached just to prove that it works.

[cbenner]

Well done my freind!

Might I say the Expert Elite tag on your name is looking good.  Congrats again.

[salariua · Accepted solution]

Thank You Chris,

You're the one that got me the Experte Elite badge.

Back to our post,

I think it's better if you author the connections as "to point / plane" because the engagement distance can't be controlled from the ipart / content center table.

if you create planes and you control the distance of them from ipart table you can have different overlapping values for each member. d16 pipe might only loose 0.5mm while a d160 pipe might need 10 mm.

Hope it makes sense.

thank you Chris once again.

[crazyjpeters]

I had done as much before the weekend after I had posted.  I thought it would use up as much of this allowance as it needed, given constraints, tight confines, etc, but appears that it's not that smart, and you need to tweak it.  It also appears that it uses all of the allowance that you give it, unless you edit it to use zero.  That's a big time killer if there are many joints.  Too bad.

Thanks for the input.

[salariua]

The "Match properties" needs voting on the idea station. That way you could use the "Match Properties" to adjust Connection distances to all fittings.

Give us a vote if you feel the need:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideastation/tube-and-pipe-overhaul/idi-p/5518269

look for item 39 in the comments 

39 – Give us a “Match Properties” function like the one in the drawing for “Copy Dimension Properties”. On the same principle if you right click when the command is active you get a “Settings” menu where you can choose what to copy: Material, Appearance, Orientation, Diameter, Connection (distances). The Orientation (rotation) is going to be the hardest but I suggest using connection 1 (they all have at least 1 connection) as the rotation axis and Z axis as direction.