Informed Design: Managed Models or Component Suppression?

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Autodesk Informed Design helps building component and product manufacturers share configurable models with their architectural design partners.

Architectural designers using Revit can configure and place manufacturing content from Informed Design, with the assurance that the models are accurate, up to date, and that the requested configuration is manufacturable.

When the design phase is complete, Informed Design can analyse the Revit project, and manufacturing outputs, such as drawings and BOM, for each variant can be generated automatically.

Click here to learn more about Informed Design.

Building configurable Inventor models for Informed Design

Autodesk Inventor has a powerful rule engine called iLogic. iLogic can be used to define configuration rules, allowing an almost infinite number of variations to be generated from a single design model.

In this article, we will consider two methods of adding and removing components from a configurable Inventor model, component suppression or iLogic Managed Components.

Click here to learn more about iLogic in Autodesk Inventor

What is the goal of an Informed Design model?

When publishing an Inventor model to Informed Design, the Architectural designer’s goal is a Revit family (RFA) that suits their needs. The model must have a suitable level of detail and the required metadata.

The manufacturer's goal is a fully detailed manufacturing model with a Bill of Materials (BOM) and drawings.

The publisher of an Inventor model to Informed Design can use Inventor Model States to provide a simplified version of the design for use in Revit, while the fully detailed version of the model is used to generate the manufacturing outputs.

A fully detailed model (Above). A simplified model (Below)

What you see is what you get.

When the Informed Design service generates an RFA from an Inventor model, only the geometry of components referenced by the active Model State is included.

Only unsuppressed components in the Inventor model will appear in the Revit RFA model.

Inventor component suppression and the BOM

Suppressing components is an easy way to control model complexity before outputting an RFA.

To suppress a top-level component in Autodesk Inventor, find it in the browser, right-click, and choose ‘Suppress’.

Click here to learn about component suppression and 0 Qty in the Inventor BOM Manager

You may see this warning:

‘Important! Suppressed components do not participate in the Bill of Materials. Unsuppressed components participate in the Bill of Materials.’

Should this concern us?

When publishing an Inventor model to Informed Design, the answer is no.

The suppressed components will not appear in the Revit RFA, which helps provide simplified geometry.

If the suppressed components do not show up in the Inventor BOM, does that mean our manufacturing data will be incorrect?

No, because Informed Design allows for manufacturing information to be derived from the fully detailed model state. This is set in the Product Definition, Outputs tab.

Multiple Model States are available as a Revit family. 2. the BOM is generated only from the Primary Model State.

Advantages and disadvantages of component suppression

• The suppression of components is easily managed using Model States or iLogic.
• Suppressed components are easy to see in the model browser.
• When copying a model, methods such as ‘'Pack-and-Go’ and Vault Copy Design can automatically find all referenced files.
• You can use iLogic to 'push' parameter values from the top-level assembly into the components. When the component is unsuppressed, it will be up to date with any changes in size.

When suppressing components, managing their relationships is essential – for example, you may also need to manage the suppression of Constraints.

iLogic Managed Components

Managed components in Inventor assemblies use a powerful iLogic capability to add or remove components from the model. iLogic will automatically add and remove relationships such as Constraints.

In the iLogic rule editor, check out the ‘iLogic Assemblies/Components’ snippet folder.

Below is the ‘Manage Components’ snippet.

Dim addCompB = True

ThisAssembly.BeginManage("Group 1")

Dim componentA = Components.Add("a:1", "a.ipt", position := Nothing, grounded := False, visible := True, appearance := Nothing)

If (addCompB)

  Dim componentB = Components.Add("b:1", "b.ipt", position := Nothing, grounded := False, visible := True, appearance := Nothing)

End If

ThisAssembly.EndManage("Group 1")

Pay attention to ‘ThisAssembly.BeginManage’ and ‘ThisAssembly.EndManage’. This creates a "managed group" state. You can use the other iLogic code snippets in between these two statements to add or remove components. iLogic will automatically include their relationships.

iLogic Manage Components snippets

Advantages and Disadvantages of iLogic Managed Components

• Components that are not in the model will not be included in RFA output or the Bill of Materials.
• Removing components from the model in their entirety improves the performance of the model.
• It’s great to let iLogic automatically add and remove relationships rather than having to track them yourself.
• You cannot 'push' parameter values from the assembly into components that have been removed from the model. You'll need to manage this in your iLogic strategy.

iLogic and Model States operate independently. You’ll need to add an iLogic rule triggered by an event to connect a change in Model States to your Managed Components rule.

Managed components do not leave a reference in the Inventor model, and therefore are not picked up when copying designs using Pack-and-go, or Vault. In this case, we recommend iLogic Design Copy.

Fun fact: Did you ever wonder why Informed Design requires you to save your entire Inventor model in one folder (the ‘Root’ folder)? This is why!

Because Managed components don’t leave a reference in the assembly containing the iLogic rule that inserts them, the only way to ensure that Managed Components are published to Informed Design is to zip and upload the entire folder.

Managed Models or Component Suppression?

iLogic managed models are a powerful tool that allows granular control of your configurable design. If your configurator will also be used outside of Informed Design, we recommend using iLogic Managed components.

If you are building a configurable Inventor model only for publishing to Informed Design, component suppression will probably suit your needs.

Download Informed Design for Inventor

What’s your take? Please add your thoughts, clarifying questions, or feedback in the comments below.