Unique file names for custom iParts

[Anonymous]

My problem is very similar to Mikes above.
I have created an iparts factory for hydraulic cylinders where the length
and bore of the cylinder can be user defined. Of course this can make for
hundreds of variations. Is it possibe to generate a filename column which
can concatenate the bore and length dimensions to a base name so that each
variation will have a unique file name?
Also, while creating this factory I had the bore and stroke preset (before
making them variable) with just a few variations. I created a filename field
(and marked it as such) with unique filenames but the darn thing keeps
saving parts with filenames like "part1" etc. and its not storing them in
the ipart children directory which is specified in my project file. After
looking at some tables of iparts which do this correctly I cant see any
difference in those tables and the one in my ipart.
Can anyone give me a hint as to what is goofed up here?
Thanks
Perry

[Anonymous]

Unless something has changed, the answer is no. You do have the option
to assign the name when you are placing the part. You might try using
the SaveCopyNReplace macro on cbliss.com to rename them after the fact.

perry wrote:

>My problem is very similar to Mikes above.
>I have created an iparts factory for hydraulic cylinders where the length
>and bore of the cylinder can be user defined. Of course this can make for
>hundreds of variations. Is it possibe to generate a filename column which
>can concatenate the bore and length dimensions to a base name so that each
>variation will have a unique file name?
>Also, while creating this factory I had the bore and stroke preset (before
>making them variable) with just a few variations. I created a filename field
>(and marked it as such) with unique filenames but the darn thing keeps
>saving parts with filenames like "part1" etc. and its not storing them in
>the ipart children directory which is specified in my project file. After
>looking at some tables of iparts which do this correctly I cant see any
>difference in those tables and the one in my ipart.
>Can anyone give me a hint as to what is goofed up here?
>Thanks
>Perry
>
>
>
>

[Anonymous]

Bummer 😞
guess Im gonna have to put a bazillion different variations in my table and
give each a filename.
Any musings on the second part of my question?
Thanks
Perry

"Charles Bliss" wrote in message
news:676882EF2AA2153F3CC817BD4BC846F9@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> Unless something has changed, the answer is no. You do have the option
> to assign the name when you are placing the part. You might try using
> the SaveCopyNReplace macro on cbliss.com to rename them after the fact.
>
> perry wrote:
>
> >My problem is very similar to Mikes above.
> >I have created an iparts factory for hydraulic cylinders where the length
> >and bore of the cylinder can be user defined. Of course this can make for
> >hundreds of variations. Is it possibe to generate a filename column which
> >can concatenate the bore and length dimensions to a base name so that
each
> >variation will have a unique file name?
> >Also, while creating this factory I had the bore and stroke preset
(before
> >making them variable) with just a few variations. I created a filename
field
> >(and marked it as such) with unique filenames but the darn thing keeps
> >saving parts with filenames like "part1" etc. and its not storing them in
> >the ipart children directory which is specified in my project file. After
> >looking at some tables of iparts which do this correctly I cant see any
> >difference in those tables and the one in my ipart.
> >Can anyone give me a hint as to what is goofed up here?
> >Thanks
> >Perry
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

[Anonymous]

Never mind, the second part of the problem seems to have cured itself when I
removed ALL custom parameters
Perry

"perry" wrote in message
news:44991C59A7A685992239D36446A656C7@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> Bummer 😞
> guess Im gonna have to put a bazillion different variations in my table
and
> give each a filename.
> Any musings on the second part of my question?
> Thanks
> Perry

[Anonymous]

Charles:

Thank you for picking up this discussion. Even though we cannot build a
filename, any chance of building a part number?

For example, our part number for a piece of structural steel cut to a 36"
length might be:

SSP-001-L36.000

where "SSP-001" designates the structural steel as purchased and "L36.000"
is the length it will be cut to create a specific part. Irregardless of the
filename, I would like each part generated by the ifactory to have the
correct part number which is a concatenated text string beginning with
"SSP-001-L" and ending with the part's length rounded off to 3 decimal
places, in this case "36.000".

Thanks again for your help!

Sincerely,

Michael

[Anonymous]

Nope there either. You can't use the custom parameter to build any other
part of the Excel formulas (which is what you want to do to concatenate the
part #).

--
Sean Dotson, PE
http://www.sdotson.com
Check the Inventor FAQ for most common questions
www.sdotson.com/faq.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
"Michael Trull" wrote in message
news:FA0077D970F3F3F1CB290FE2603DB49F@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> Charles:
>
> Thank you for picking up this discussion. Even though we cannot build a
> filename, any chance of building a part number?
>
> For example, our part number for a piece of structural steel cut to a 36"
> length might be:
>
> SSP-001-L36.000
>
> where "SSP-001" designates the structural steel as purchased and "L36.000"
> is the length it will be cut to create a specific part. Irregardless of
the
> filename, I would like each part generated by the ifactory to have the
> correct part number which is a concatenated text string beginning with
> "SSP-001-L" and ending with the part's length rounded off to 3 decimal
> places, in this case "36.000".
>
> Thanks again for your help!
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Michael
>
>

[Anonymous]

So, you want the file's macro to trap the OnSave event and check the
filename against the length parameter. If the length has changed, you
want to rename and relink the file. What happens to other "were used"
assemblies?

Michael Trull wrote:

>Charles:
>
>Thank you for picking up this discussion. Even though we cannot build a
>filename, any chance of building a part number?
>
>For example, our part number for a piece of structural steel cut to a 36"
>length might be:
>
> SSP-001-L36.000
>
>where "SSP-001" designates the structural steel as purchased and "L36.000"
>is the length it will be cut to create a specific part. Irregardless of the
>filename, I would like each part generated by the ifactory to have the
>correct part number which is a concatenated text string beginning with
>"SSP-001-L" and ending with the part's length rounded off to 3 decimal
>places, in this case "36.000".
>
>Thanks again for your help!
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Michael
>
>
>
>

[Anonymous]

Well Michael, Charles and Sean are the top guru's here and if they say
forget it then we probably should. (I hate those "frustration" exercises).
Looks like its back to plan "A".
Perry

"Michael Trull" wrote in message
news:FA0077D970F3F3F1CB290FE2603DB49F@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> Charles:
>
> Thank you for picking up this discussion. Even though we cannot build a
> filename, any chance of building a part number?
>
> For example, our part number for a piece of structural steel cut to a 36"
> length might be:
>
> SSP-001-L36.000
>
> where "SSP-001" designates the structural steel as purchased and "L36.000"
> is the length it will be cut to create a specific part. Irregardless of
the
> filename, I would like each part generated by the ifactory to have the
> correct part number which is a concatenated text string beginning with
> "SSP-001-L" and ending with the part's length rounded off to 3 decimal
> places, in this case "36.000".
>
> Thanks again for your help!
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Michael
>
>

[Anonymous]

Charles:

Without question filename management after the initial save is a problem.
But the key piece of information driving a machine build is the part number
and automatically updating it to reflect the correct length would mean that
I would always have a correct bill of materials.

As it is now, I have to manually update the part number so the bill of
materials is always at risk of being in error due to my negligence. To try
to minimize human error, I use a dummy part number (SSP-001-LXX.XXX for
example) and do not edit it until I am ready to release the bill of
materials. By doing this I know the part number is wrong by just looking at
it. If I did not do this, a 36" part could slip by with a 24" part number.

Regarding filenames, it is convenient to be able to quickly recognize parts
by making the filename be the part number, but this has no effect on the
bill of materials or the build. At the end of a project I typically use the
Design Assistant to update the filenames to be the part number, but this is
not necessary. I could just leave Inventor's default filenames (Part 1, Part
2, Part 3, etc.) and everything would be fine as long as the part numbers
are correct.

Considering that I only edit a fraction of the custom iparts created for a
project after their initial creation, using the part number as the initial
filename would save some time in the Design Assistant since the filenames
would be correct for all the parts that were not edited. As it is now, I
must edit every custom iPart (and its part number).

By the way, I use your bill of material extractor to generate the bill of
materials for each project and consider it to be the most valuable add-on I
have ever run across for Inventor. It not only provides a list of parts, in
Excel format, which can be used to manage purchasing and part fabrication,
but it also becomes the specification driving the fabrication of a large
number of our parts eliminating the need for detail drawings (because of the
way we structure our part numbers). For example, I can provide a structural
steel cut list to the shop by just printing out all of the SSP-001-L??.???
entries. Autodesk would be well advised to add this type of BOM reporting
capability to inventor's Design Assistant.

I apologize for the length of this message - I truly appreciate your
observations and assistance.

Sincerely,

Michael


"Charles Bliss" wrote in message
news:7C298285388FA8F8F32B9E216B4EBF46@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> So, you want the file's macro to trap the OnSave event and check the
> filename against the length parameter. If the length has changed, you
> want to rename and relink the file. What happens to other "were used"
> assemblies?

[Anonymous]

I haven't found a way, but IF you could hide a column's border line, you
could create a column that contained the values for 2 parmeters.

That would allow you to have a text parameter for your SSP-001-L and then a
driven numerical parameter for your length.......

Then you'd have to merge 2 cells for the title, of course.

Am I dreaming? 🙂

--
______________
Rui
www.cadmais.pt


"Michael Trull" wrote in message
news:8C9A965358AD969DA7F67135C9880607@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> Charles:
>
> Without question filename management after the initial save is a problem.
> But the key piece of information driving a machine build is the part
number
> and automatically updating it to reflect the correct length would mean
that
> I would always have a correct bill of materials.
>
> As it is now, I have to manually update the part number so the bill of
> materials is always at risk of being in error due to my negligence. To try
> to minimize human error, I use a dummy part number (SSP-001-LXX.XXX for
> example) and do not edit it until I am ready to release the bill of
> materials. By doing this I know the part number is wrong by just looking
at
> it. If I did not do this, a 36" part could slip by with a 24" part number.
>
> Regarding filenames, it is convenient to be able to quickly recognize
parts
> by making the filename be the part number, but this has no effect on the
> bill of materials or the build. At the end of a project I typically use
the
> Design Assistant to update the filenames to be the part number, but this
is
> not necessary. I could just leave Inventor's default filenames (Part 1,
Part
> 2, Part 3, etc.) and everything would be fine as long as the part numbers
> are correct.
>
> Considering that I only edit a fraction of the custom iparts created for a
> project after their initial creation, using the part number as the initial
> filename would save some time in the Design Assistant since the filenames
> would be correct for all the parts that were not edited. As it is now, I
> must edit every custom iPart (and its part number).
>
> By the way, I use your bill of material extractor to generate the bill of
> materials for each project and consider it to be the most valuable add-on
I
> have ever run across for Inventor. It not only provides a list of parts,
in
> Excel format, which can be used to manage purchasing and part fabrication,
> but it also becomes the specification driving the fabrication of a large
> number of our parts eliminating the need for detail drawings (because of
the
> way we structure our part numbers). For example, I can provide a
structural
> steel cut list to the shop by just printing out all of the SSP-001-L??.???
> entries. Autodesk would be well advised to add this type of BOM reporting
> capability to inventor's Design Assistant.
>
> I apologize for the length of this message - I truly appreciate your
> observations and assistance.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Michael
>
>
> "Charles Bliss" wrote in message
> news:7C298285388FA8F8F32B9E216B4EBF46@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> > So, you want the file's macro to trap the OnSave event and check the
> > filename against the length parameter. If the length has changed, you
> > want to rename and relink the file. What happens to other "were used"
> > assemblies?
>
>

[Anonymous]

Rui:

Thanks for the suggestion.

I did consider displaying the parameters in the parts list, but quickly came
to the conclusion that this approach would not accomplish everything that I
would like to do. First and foremost it does not get me a complete and
accurate bill of materials using Charles' BOM extractor since parts of
varying length would all be listed with a single part number, "SSP-001-L" in
this instance, with a single quantity for each part number. Similarly, I
would loose the fabrication information such as cut lists which directly
fall out of the bill of materials when the parameters are imbedded in the
part number.

Another obstacle had to do with the parameters themselves. In addition to
length, we have parts with parameters for end angles when the ends are not
cut square (e.g. SSP-001-L36.000-A30.0-A60.0) and others that include
nominal size (NS1.000) or threading (T.500-13), shafting and threaded rod
are examples where these types of parameters would be used.

This could be partially overcome, however, by using names such as
Parameter1, Parameter2, and Parameter3 in the iPart factories rather than
Length, NominalSize, and Thread as we do now. I expect parts lists could
then include three columns which would then be populated with these
parameters when they were available (we have yet to exceed three
parameters). We would still loose the letter identifiers at the beginning of
each parameter which help us to understand what is being described without
having to pull out a shared drawing detailing the use of parameters in the
part number, but this would merely be an inconvenience.

Yet we would still be dependent on the parts lists in our drawings with no
convenient way to roll up everything into a single list to give a total
count of parts at each length to give to the shop.

Sincerely,

Michael



"Rui" wrote in message
news:6B11797091D480FF3AC17041AF08F1B7@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> I haven't found a way, but IF you could hide a column's border line, you
> could create a column that contained the values for 2 parmeters.
>
> That would allow you to have a text parameter for your SSP-001-L and then
a
> driven numerical parameter for your length.......
>
> Then you'd have to merge 2 cells for the title, of course.
>
> Am I dreaming? 🙂

[Anonymous]

Well almost anything can be done with some custom VB code. There is just no
way with the tools built into Inventor.

--
Sean Dotson, PE
http://www.sdotson.com
Check the Inventor FAQ for most common questions
www.sdotson.com/faq.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
"perry" wrote in message
news:A41E442C5F3C703CCCDA90309FA9FE45@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> Well Michael, Charles and Sean are the top guru's here and if they say
> forget it then we probably should. (I hate those "frustration" exercises).
> Looks like its back to plan "A".
> Perry
>
> "Michael Trull" wrote in message
> news:FA0077D970F3F3F1CB290FE2603DB49F@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> > Charles:
> >
> > Thank you for picking up this discussion. Even though we cannot build a
> > filename, any chance of building a part number?
> >
> > For example, our part number for a piece of structural steel cut to a
36"
> > length might be:
> >
> > SSP-001-L36.000
> >
> > where "SSP-001" designates the structural steel as purchased and
"L36.000"
> > is the length it will be cut to create a specific part. Irregardless of
> the
> > filename, I would like each part generated by the ifactory to have the
> > correct part number which is a concatenated text string beginning with
> > "SSP-001-L" and ending with the part's length rounded off to 3 decimal
> > places, in this case "36.000".
> >
> > Thanks again for your help!
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Michael
> >
> >
>
>

[Anonymous]

I don't use Charles' BOM Extractor, but have you tried saving your parts
list to Excel and reformatting something there?

I think, however that your solution may be possible in VBA.

I created a small app to extract part dimensions to use in a BOM. All it
does is look for certain parameters and join them in a text parameter with
other items, like "Ø" and "×".

It looks for certain existing parameters and then alters a custom parameter
to look the way I want. Probably could work for you.

If you or anyone else wants to look at it, I can post it.

--
______________
Rui
www.cadmais.pt


"Michael Trull" wrote in message
news:DC6B04D8D785DE5707E4A45A0D896200@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> Rui:
>
> Thanks for the suggestion.
>
> I did consider displaying the parameters in the parts list, but quickly
came
> to the conclusion that this approach would not accomplish everything that
I
> would like to do. First and foremost it does not get me a complete and
> accurate bill of materials using Charles' BOM extractor since parts of
> varying length would all be listed with a single part number, "SSP-001-L"
in
> this instance, with a single quantity for each part number. Similarly, I
> would loose the fabrication information such as cut lists which directly
> fall out of the bill of materials when the parameters are imbedded in the
> part number.
>
> Another obstacle had to do with the parameters themselves. In addition to
> length, we have parts with parameters for end angles when the ends are not
> cut square (e.g. SSP-001-L36.000-A30.0-A60.0) and others that include
> nominal size (NS1.000) or threading (T.500-13), shafting and threaded rod
> are examples where these types of parameters would be used.
>
> This could be partially overcome, however, by using names such as
> Parameter1, Parameter2, and Parameter3 in the iPart factories rather than
> Length, NominalSize, and Thread as we do now. I expect parts lists could
> then include three columns which would then be populated with these
> parameters when they were available (we have yet to exceed three
> parameters). We would still loose the letter identifiers at the beginning
of
> each parameter which help us to understand what is being described without
> having to pull out a shared drawing detailing the use of parameters in the
> part number, but this would merely be an inconvenience.
>
> Yet we would still be dependent on the parts lists in our drawings with no
> convenient way to roll up everything into a single list to give a total
> count of parts at each length to give to the shop.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Michael
>
>
>
> "Rui" wrote in message
> news:6B11797091D480FF3AC17041AF08F1B7@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> > I haven't found a way, but IF you could hide a column's border line, you
> > could create a column that contained the values for 2 parmeters.
> >
> > That would allow you to have a text parameter for your SSP-001-L and
then
> a
> > driven numerical parameter for your length.......
> >
> > Then you'd have to merge 2 cells for the title, of course.
> >
> > Am I dreaming? 🙂
>
>

[Anonymous]

Rui:

Thank you for your onoging help with this!

I do not know VBA or the Inventor API but it looks like this will be the
only approach that will work. With all the VBA add-ons discussed in this
group its certainly becoming obvious that it is a valuable tool that is
essential to getting everything you can out of Inventor. So it looks as if I
have some training to do.

Even not knowing Inventor, I have little doubt that a VBA routine could read
the applicable parameters and build the correct part number. And given
Charles comment earlier, I expect the OnSave event could be trapped to
initiate building of the correct part number. But can this new number then
be saved as the part number rather than a custom parameter? Everything we do
is now built around the part number property and I am very reluctant to
change this.

Sincerely,

Michael

[Anonymous]

I'm sure it can change the part number, but my VBA won't get there yet. I
haven't had the need to explore changing file names up till now.


--
______________
Rui
www.cadmais.pt


"Michael Trull" wrote in message
news:BD13C0C6AD57AF0465FF77B4C62014BE@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> Rui:
>
> Thank you for your onoging help with this!
>
> I do not know VBA or the Inventor API but it looks like this will be the
> only approach that will work. With all the VBA add-ons discussed in this
> group its certainly becoming obvious that it is a valuable tool that is
> essential to getting everything you can out of Inventor. So it looks as if
I
> have some training to do.
>
> Even not knowing Inventor, I have little doubt that a VBA routine could
read
> the applicable parameters and build the correct part number. And given
> Charles comment earlier, I expect the OnSave event could be trapped to
> initiate building of the correct part number. But can this new number then
> be saved as the part number rather than a custom parameter? Everything we
do
> is now built around the part number property and I am very reluctant to
> change this.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Michael
>
>