Making parts lists from bodies and editing balloons

[Garyselliot]

Hello. 

I'm currently creating sub assembly drawings for some welded steel fabrications, and the way I have broken down my model tree includes some sub assembly components being made up of multiple bodies that I want to identify individually in the parts list. Upon discovering that the automatic parts list function will only work with components I thought fine, next time I'll bear that in mind when deciding on a tree structure, but for now I'll just create a manual parts list. So I create and populate the table which didn't take long, and then add the balloons. So I now have three balloons all with the number 1, but I want 1,2,3. The 'renumber' function does't help at all. If I select a balloon and change it's number, then all three balloons change, presumably because they are all pointing to the same 'component'. This behavior really is frustrating. Is it really this restrictive or am I missing something here? 

[ClintBrown3D]

Hi @Garyselliot 

You are spot on, the re-number tool is going to re-number all instances, as the balloon is pointing to the component instance. As it stands, the Balloons are tied back to components, this way we track then on the drawing and understand when they are updated or re-numbered.

In your example of a workflow with bodies, I can certainly see the frustration you have.

One thing you could do in this instance is use a sketched symbol for your balloon, once you have created one, they are pretty easy to copy and adjust, see GIF below.

[Garyselliot]

Hi Clint

Thanks for the quick reply. This will work as a workaround.

Can I make a suggestion to the developers to add an editable 'custom balloon' feature next to the 'custom table' feature? Although it would be possible in future to ensure that the model tree is structured as 'components' down to the last level, in some instances I deliberately don't do this as I find it keeps the tree cleaner and easier to navigate to just use 'bodies'. An even better solution would be to give the option for the auto parts list to also work at body level. 

[ClintBrown3D]

Hi @Garyselliot 

That's a nice feature suggestion. Every customer request that we get, from meetings, emails, forum posts etc. gets collected and categorised in our feature request database. This information is used to prioritise the features that we build next. I've added your request to our database.