Correct workflow for complex mached/welded assemblies

[Anonymous]

I've started with a new company who are using Inventor where I have used Solidworks and Catina prodeminatly in the past.

We produce a lot of components which have multiple weld procedures and machining procedures. Is there a simpler way of doing things rather than having multiple weldment
Assemblies. It seams like a very clunky way of doing things imo. In some cases I'm having to make 7 weldmwnt asseblies to account for all of the process going on.

I'm just finding things very long winded and when something changes at a lower lever it obviously effects all the assemblies after it which requires me To go through each accordingly to check they have updated callrectly and to carry out any required changes to repair them.

[MechMachineMan]

Yes, that sounds about right for how its set up. But they might be doing it excessively. Depends on how much details and how many sequential processes there are.

The only reason you need to make another level of weldment files is if the processes do not follow this order:

Prep, Weld, Machine.

This means that every time you have to machine an assembly after welding it, you need to add a new level of documents.

[Anonymous]

I'm trying my best to reduce down the number of processes.
The most recent one is as follows.
Water jet component profile and through holes>
Machine top and Bottom Faces to the and parallel >
Weld on legs>
Machine recesses , key ways and countersunk holes>
Tap holes>
Skim down to final size and surface finish>

That one wasn't to bad as it didn't have any additional hard welded surface finish or hard chrome finish to be added as well as the machining .

Just trying to see if there is an easy / more efficient way of doing things before I spend the next couple of years producing many models and drawings of these things.

[swalton]

Modeling several steps of a production process is more complex than just modeling the finished object. 

You might look at iParts or a derived part workflow.  I do that for sand castings or post-weld machining that actually cuts a weld bead.

In your example, I might try the following

Make an ipart that covers the first two steps (waterjet and machining)

Bring the machined ipart child into the weldment environment. Add the legs and the welds. Do your fabricators/machinists need to see 3D weld beads?  If not, use a regular assembly.

Derive the completed weldment into a new iPart file.

Make a new ipart child for each machining step.

There might be a nice multibody workflow too, but I have not explored that.

[MechMachineMan]

Doesn't using iParts for this just add more files though? 1 for the factory
and then another model for each step?

[swalton]

With the exception of weldment iams, I don't see how to avoid a file on disk for each distinct manufacturing step. 

Most Inventor files only allow one geometric state at a time.  iParts, iAssemblies, and Weldments allow more than one state, but you still get a factory file or assembly that contains the entire geometric state definition. 

It is possible to model the raw casting, derive it into a rough machined part, add that to a weldment.iam with prep, welds, and machining (if you don't need an external thread), and then use the final weldment.iam in another assembly.  I've done that and it works ok if I don't have to re-design the raw casting much.  Changes to the raw casting can break lots of downstream features.

By using an ipart to control the raw casting and the rough machined part, it may be possible to minimize the problems with the downstream features.  I haven't had to do a new casting so I haven't tried it yet.

[smokes2998]

Inventor is not currently capable of feature based configurations like SW,so you have to create welded machined frames using Welded assemblies and, parts using derived tool(for machined castings) . iassemblies and iparts are basically table driven versions of these process but you still end up creating parts and assemblies.

With welded machined assemblies the order will always be, prep, weld, then machine, if you have to weld an another section on after machined stage you have to nest assemblies in order to show that you want to weld something on to a machined frame in the drawings. There are workarounds but they can get messy.

[Anonymous]

Had a meeting this afternoon to decide as a company how we are going to proceed with this.

We want to keep it as efficient and least amount of work required from the drawing office to get the parts fabricated.

One thing that came out of the meeting was the different views on structuring the files.

My thinking is that the part number remains the same throughout all of the process so part 1 is allways "part 1 (1st Process)" > "part 1 (2nd process)"

However other were saying it should start as "part 1" then after 1st process become "part 2" then part three and so on.

We aren't using vault and it looks certainly for the time being that's going to remain that way.

I come from a Solidworks back ground and I know I would probably just have 1 assembly and do different configurations for each step but that doesn't appear possible with Inventor.