View Representation - BOM - Quantity Question

[lkrenzler]

I'm trying to use View Representations in my assembly so that I can produce different drawings from the same assembley (eg. general assembly, framework, plumbing etc.).  

This works OK except that if the same type of part exists in more than one View Rep., the quantity in the Parts List is wrong (it counts them all).  (I'm using the filter in the Parts list to get a list of what's in the View Rep.)

This can be quite a problem on larger assemblies.  Does anyone have a suggestion on how to do this properly?  Perhaps this whole workflow is not the best, I'm not sure.  Is there a better way?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.  - Thanks!

[jurgen.galba]

Copy your View Representation to Level Of Detail, all the invisible parts will become supressed and won't turn up in Parts list.

[mcgyvr]

The "proper" way is to use iassemblies (easy) or ilogic driven configurations (more advanced but more powerful but requires coding skills). 

not sure what jurgen is trying to recommend.. Suppressed parts still show up in a parts list when using LOD.. 

[jurgen.galba]

ya, you right - even with LOD a full parts list will be shown - i always expected this to only do the parts that are in the LOD by default... 😞

But in the parts list dialog screen, you can filter (third top button from the right). Select the View Representation, and only those components will be in your parts list

[mcgyvr · Accepted solution]

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@jurgen.galba wrote:

But in the parts list dialog screen, you can filter (third top button from the right). Select the View Representation, and only those components will be in your parts list

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BUT... Even with the view rep filters....If you (for example) have 3 screws and you turn 2 of them off its still going to show 3 in the parts list.. Only if ALL instances of a part/assy are turned off will it be totally removed from the parts list.

iassemblies is the proper way to have 1 "main" assembly (its called the factory in iassemblies) and be able to make multiple versions (called the members in iassy)of it and have the parts list update accordingly. 

[lkrenzler]

Thanks guys.  This is exactly the problem I've run into.  Suppressing does not remove them from the parts list (which seems rediculous) and and the filter can't count 

Thanks for suggesting iassemblies.  I didn't try it as it seemed unnessasarily complicated but I'll give it a go and see what happens.  Thanks again.

[lkrenzler]

Sorry, I have another question on this.  Using IAssemblies, all I really want to do is include/exclude parts (and have that reflected in the BOM).

I figured out how to do this but it gives me a table in the Author with all the parts in the assembly and in order to exclude them, I seem to need to add each part separately to the exclusion table and then click exclude in the tab below.  With a few thousand parts this very quickly becomes completely impractical (I can't even seem to multi-select parts in the IAssembly Author.)

Is there a better way to do this?  It seems to ignore folders.  Excluding a view represenation seems to do nothing.

All I was hoping for was a view representation which would update the parts list.  The whole iPart/iAssembly whatever system is really not at all up to the standard of the rest of inventor and the UI is terrible so I was hoping to avoid it.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.  Thanks!

[swalton]

You have found the limitations of iAssemblies. 

Here is another way that might help:

Create sub-assemblies for each design view.  Set each sub as phantom (tools, document settings, Bill of Materials). Use the demote/promote tools to move components to and from the top level assembly and the various subs.  I would wait until the design is mainly complete for this step.

Set the design rep sub-assemblies to Flexible so you can constrain components in one sub to another sub in the top level assembly.

On your print, create a view of the sub-assembly. Show the parts list for that sub-assembly.  It will have the correct count for those components.

The parts list for the top level assembly will promote and combine all the member components of the design view sub-assemblies.  It will not show an entry for any of the design view sub-assemblies.

Basically you create placeholder sub-assemblies that do not appear on a Parts List to hold the components that you want to show up in a specific drawing view.

[lkrenzler]

Thanks so much.  I'll give that a try.

[mcgyvr]

When using iassemblies you can change "edit factory scope" to "edit member scope" and make sure you are on the proper member (its in the assemble tab.. ipart/iassembly section)

Then you can easily right click on a whole folder and select exclude which will automatically create the needed information in the iassembly table for that specific member.

Or multiselect and exclude or whatever you need to do.

You can also open the table in excel and do quick stuff there too..

Do it right. Its very quick when you know how to do it. The tools are there you just don't know how to use them properly. 🙂 

[lkrenzler]

OK, that works well for excluding parts from the view but the excluded parts are still in the parts list which defeats the whole purpose.  How do I exclude them from the parts list?

I tried changing the unwanted parts BOM structure to reference which seems to be the only other choice.  That seems to change quantity to 0 but they're still there.  I've tried the "Hide Rows with 0 Quantity" which seems to do nothing, it still shows all the ones with 0 quantity.  Also if I renumber or re-order anything in one parts list it does it in all the others too which is not desireable.

Thanks so much for your help!

[lkrenzler]

One more issue I've run into is that once I make it an iAssembly, it seems I can't even to simple edits to the assembly.  For instance, I had a couple bad constraints and I couldn't delete them until I deleted the iAssembly table.  Is there a way around this?  Obviously I can't rebuild the table and all the drawings every time I want to make a change.

[lkrenzler]

Nevermind, I figured out I needed to go back to "Edit Factory Scope" to edit constraints it seems.

Still trying to figure out how to not display parts that are excluded.  The "Hide Rows with 0 Quantity" should do it but it does nothing.  Hmmm.

I guess I can manually hide them but that'll get tedious.

[mcgyvr]

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@lkrenzler wrote:

OK, that works well for excluding parts from the view but the excluded parts are still in the parts list which defeats the whole purpose.  How do I exclude them from the parts list?

I tried changing the unwanted parts BOM structure to reference which seems to be the only other choice.  That seems to change quantity to 0 but they're still there.  I've tried the "Hide Rows with 0 Quantity" which seems to do nothing, it still shows all the ones with 0 quantity.  Also if I renumber or re-order anything in one parts list it does it in all the others too which is not desireable.

Thanks so much for your help!

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IF you change the parts for that member to "exlude" they will not show up in the parts list unless you have the parts list set to show multiple members then it will show a "0" for that part in that row for that member. And there is nothing wrong with that. Thats how it should be.

If you only have a parts list for that member only it won't show the row at all assuming the qty is now 0. 

I have no idea why someone recommended reference.. Some goofy workaround I guess. Reference is for parts that you don't want in the parts list/bom like for example.. If building a bicycle stand you could have the bike in the model and set it to reference in the bom because its just being used for "reference" of course. 

[lkrenzler]

That is exactly what I would have thought but there they are.  Nothing has been exluded from the parts list.  

[mcgyvr]

It works fine for me.. (Inv2015)

I don't know what else you have messed with so I can't help more than to say it does work.. 

Are you up to date on hotfixes/service packs/updates or whatever they changed the names to this week?

[lkrenzler]

Thanks for your help.  I haven't been able to figure it out yet but this gets me closer to the goal.  I can manually hide the 0 quantity ones for now.

I'm on 2014 SP2.  I did have the update 1 for SP2 installed but it had a nasty bug in FEA so I took it out.  So as up to date as possible for 2014.

This whole BOM/Parts list system has been a real PETA right from day one we started using it.  I really hope they do a workover on it so it actually makes sense and works.  Right now it's far from friendly (exspecially for new users).

If they just made it so suppressed items would be exluded from the parts list (or an option to) it would be so easy, we could just use view representations or levels of detail.

Oh well, thanks again for all your help.

[lkrenzler]

I've come accross some nasty surprises (or not surprises) when trying to use iAssemblies in this way.  Just thought I'd post them here in case anyone else is trying to do this or has some workarounds.

1) Now I'm getting a "Too Many Collumns" error every time I include or exclude something and it doesn't save the changes sometimes.  What the ...?

2) If you rename any parts or assemblies in the Vault, it will NEVER be resolved in your iAssembly.  Sheesh!  Now I have a real mess.

I'm on 2014 SP2.  Not sure if any of this has been resolved in 2015 but is sure throws a wrench in this project.

[mcgyvr]

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@lkrenzler wrote:

I've come accross some nasty surprises (or not surprises) when trying to use iAssemblies in this way.  Just thought I'd post them here in case anyone else is trying to do this or has some workarounds.

1) Now I'm getting a "Too Many Collumns" error every time I include or exclude something and it doesn't save the changes sometimes.  What the ...?

2) If you rename any parts or assemblies in the Vault, it will NEVER be resolved in your iAssembly.  Sheesh!  Now I have a real mess.

I'm on 2014 SP2.  Not sure if any of this has been resolved in 2015 but is sure throws a wrench in this project.

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1) There is a limit.. 

I believe its like 65536 rows and 256 columns for Excel 2003 and older and 1048576 rows x 16384 columns in excel 2007 and newer)

I'd hope Autodesk honors those limits. 

I think the iassembly table is limited to 1000 rows but that can be modified by a registry change.

2) I've always heard that iassemblies/iparts don't play nice with Vault.. But I don't use it so its never been a problem for me.. (thats part of the reason I don't use Vault..)

I have no idea what you are actually trying to model but there are limitations to everything in life 🙂

[lkrenzler]

It sure doesn't play nice with Vault but I don't have a choice but to use Vault here.  Like so many AD products, Vault is a great concept, just very poorly implemented.  Works until you have a real project and actually try to use it.

I'm only modeling a mud tank for a drilling rig which is of moderate complexity but it's not a new space shuttle or anything really complex. 🙂

I have 2003 so I guess that's the problem.  I'll suppose I'll have to get a new version of excell.  I don't even want to use it at all but it seems tied to that.