Converting large assembly into 2D drawings?

[JoshBretscher]

I have a large assembly file that I'm trying to convert to 2D drawings.  I'm not too familiar with 2D so I'm looking for suggestions on how to it in the most efficient fashion.  I'd say >90% the parts in the assembly are frame legs (granted all of very weird/unique lengths) and would only require a profile of their shape and all the lengths of each leg.  I read something on how to utilize LOD and view representations to manipulate drawings into displaying single parts of assemblies, but that would take forever for what I'm trying to do.  Is there any easy way to put the length of the legs in the part number or description?  Or an easy way to automatically generate a drawing of each leg with its profile and length?  I'm using Inventor pro 2019.

[jhackney1972]

In the older days of drafting, when we had very common details of the same material, just different lengths, we did tabulated drawings.  Before I get yelled at by everyone of the forum, this is not a parametric way of doing drawings but it is fast.  By not being parametric I mean if a component of your assembly changes, the 2D drawing will not update.

In my drawing of a four piece assembly, I simple do a base drawing of a part, and then using an Inventor table, create a table of all the components.  You can copy and paste into the cells and all you have to do is fill in the Cut Length.  I used an balloon edit to make the numbers anything I like.  You said most of your components were the same material, just different lengths and that is where tabulated drawings were used the most.

It is crude in todays modern CAD packages, but tabulated drawings still have their uses.

[PaulMunford]

If you make it an iPart you can produce a tabulated drawing automagically.

Alternatively, you can export the length dimension as a custom iProperty, and then include this in a cut list.

[JoshBretscher]

I don't think I would be able to use iParts as almost everything is part of an iCopy feature (though I'm not too familiar with iParts so I may be wrong).  That said though a tabulated table that's unparametric seems like the best solution.  What would would be the best way to retrieve a variable such as the length from every part?  Could I give the length a driven dimension (because of iCopy) and then somehow retrieve the variable for that length from every part somehow?

[hncarle]

When you generate something with frame generator it automatically produces a "cut length" variable that you can put into your BOM.  But you can also add that same variable into ANY PART and use it for cut length.  The variable is "G_L" (Case sensitive) With frame generator the variable is automatically set to export.  If you add this to another part you will have to mark it to export.  Look in the parameters window and mark the far right box.  See picture.

kelly.young has embedded your image for clarity.