Update idw file

[odumitre]

Hello,

I use Inventor 2015 and I've created a quite large assembly and also a idw drawing for this.

From this assembly I want to create some other children of this with some different particularities, some parts are larger, smaller… I used Design Assistant to create these children assemblies and it worked well. Now I want to create the children idw drawings for all of these assemblies. The problem is that the new idw files refer to the old assemblies where I copied from.

Is there a way that I can create a new drawing from an old one but assign to the views of this the other assemblies? I this way I will not have to create new drawing for each version of a parent assembly.

Thanks,

odumitre

[swalton · Accepted solution]

One way to fix your existing new drawings is to use the "replace reference model" command in the idw environment. 

1. Open your drawing of the old assembly.

2. "Save Copy As" that drawing to make your new drawing file.  It will still reference the old assembly file. (if you already have copied drawings, just open them)

3. Go to the "Manage Tab" in the new drawing.

4. Click on "replace reference model"

5. Select the old model in the drawing file and replace it with the new one. 

If all the components in the new file are copies of components in the old assembly, most, if not all, of your dimensions, notes, etc will not be lost.  You can keep the lost annotations by going to your tool/document settings menu and selecting the "preserve drawing annotations" before using the "replace reference model" command.

In the future, I think you can use the Design Assistant to copy the drawings too.  I am not sure of the workflow because I use the Copy Design in Vault for this type of work.  In fact, I originally set up a test Vault years ago because I found Design Assistant too cumbersome. 

[mcgyvr]

You might want to look at iparts/iassemblies too versus just copying files and changing them.

[odumitre]

Thank you very much for your answer.