Assembly Referance Components for part/ sub-assembly positioning

[ethan.scott.downey]

Hi there, 

Please forgive my lack of knowledge as im currently trialing the 30 days of Inventor. I have 12 years of Solidworks experiance, working with large assemblies. I generally use the master model technique. My brain is still fixed in the ways of Solidworks. 

Two things that im struggling with whilst learning Inventor are:

•  Referancing the position of another part/ or assemby UCS. In Solidworks, I was able to select a origin/ or coordinate system (Inventor's UCS) external to the part being edited within a assembly. I was able to locate the X, Y and Z axis so it was truly positioned to the referance part no matter if position changes occurred. This is setup in the master model and provides a true Mated (Inventors Relationship) position in the production assembly files. This is useful for standard components, common components and library components that often get reused to drive master sketches, planes and surfaces.
• Terminology of comands. The comand that im interested in is what Solidworks calls a envelope. The Inventor envelope command doesnt appear to have the same outcome. A Solidworks envelope is more of a referance component to position other components to. This is extremly helpful for placing a upper level part/assembly within a sub-assembly to postion all the parts within. This same envelope can also be optioned to show up as a dashed line in the 2d drawing.
  Solidworks even had a publisher for this to make it easier. 
  https://help.solidworks.com/2020/english/SolidWorks/sldworks/c_Assembly_Envelopes.htm?id=e1af825e19b...
  https://help.solidworks.com/2020/english/SolidWorks/sldworks/c_envelope_publisher.htm?id=9ec5c5a4389...

I believe im either over looking the funcationality of Inventor or wronly using the software.  Hope someone can provide some help.

Thanks

Ethan

[Gabriel_Watson]

You can constrain the origin planes/point of one subcomponent (assembly or part) to its upper assembly's origin features:

Typically by flushing plane to plane on origin planes you could center the subcomponent to match the upper assembly's origins. Or you may simply pick a productivity tool that does it automatically for you (Ground and Root):

As for the envelope, Inventor calls "envelope" a function that technically gives you the bounding box of a 3D geometry. What you may be looking for is the "Simplify" tool or, similarly, "Derive". Those two allow you to create a simple reference out of any assembly or part, and you could pick "Single Composite Feature" if you just needed a surface reference of the original model (previous versions of Inventor would call that a "Shrinkwrap"):

Also, notice that you would need to change that reference part's BOM settings to note it as a reference and avoid its inclusion in the BOM:

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Ethan,

For #1, please share an example that you are working on. I would like to know the exact requirement before making suggestion. Otherwise, it can be very confusing to a new user like you.

Many thanks!