Hi,
Are you trying to protect your design from other people working on the design or from yourself?
If you are trying to protect the design from yourself then your workflow seems to be too complex. Doing everything
in a logical and consistent way will always be better than being all over the place. If your workflow is so complex you
keep confusing yourself then you need an easier method.
Design heirarchies should flow something like this:
Top level container
Assemblies of either sub-assemblies or individual parts
Individual parts
Whatever is left over, like hardware imported into the design.
Aeroplane
Fuselage
Empanage
Vertical Stabiliser
Rudder
Horizontal Stabiliser
Elevator
Wing
Flap
Aileron
Landing Gear
Strut
Wheel
Brake
Engine
Propeller
There are many ways to do this and some are set out in Design Standardisation Documents and some are just good
practice. You never want complexity just because you can. In the real world, your design will almost certainly be used
or at least looked at by others and they need to understand what you have done.
Engineers and Designers typically split a Design into Assemblies that are stand alone groups or parts, or groups
or Sub-assemblies and Parts or combinations of both. A Sub-assembly can also be stand alone or a group of other
Sub-assemblies and or Parts. A Part is a single part of a design.
In this Forum you will get designs from a simple cheese grater to some complex machine for manufacturing widgets.
The thing the designs will (or should) have in common is the way they are put together in these groups.
I can't really think of a reason you would have an empty container in a design unless it was part of some documented
standard, and even then surely the standard would say if it was empty then don't use it.
I understand that we can all get a bit carried away when we are on a roll designing and sometimes we put stuff in
places that really should be somewhere else and need to fix it, but if this is happening every time then there is
something too complicated in your workflow.
Things are different when you are working in a design team. There are ways to lock down components that are
imported into a design from elsewhere. In the example I used, the wing design may change shape many times with
wind tunnel testing, but the shape of the wing that gets bolted onto the fuselage will remain the same. There will be
some Standard that tells the fuselage design team what shape to make the wing cutout, but the actual wing will be
whatever the wing design team supplies in the imported wing assembly. If you don't have permission from the team
to make changes then any changes will be cosmetic, the base design will remain the same.
Having a clean timeline is a good practice and naming stuff is important. It sounds to me that you get a bit
enthusiastic sometimes and keep going with something instead of slowing down and putting it in the right place.
We all do that at times. Excessive speed often leads to mistakes and failures. Speed will come with experience and
practice. Get the workflow clean first and the rest will follow. Don't go looking for complicated fixes for problems
that are carelessness and not cross checking what you are doing.
Have a look at the RULES pinned to the top of the Forum, they will help you get things consistent. Try to remember
that it doesn't matter if only you or lots of people will look at the design, always try to use best practice. Even on small
"quick and dirty" projects, they often grow into much bigger projects and it is much harder to fix problems later.
Cheers
Andrew
