Creating a part which is the easiest to modify later.

[Anonymous]

Hi people of the forums,

Currently I am working on remodeling an old part which the previous designer made it a pain to modify it or it might be so old todays features weren't available.

When he/she created it they did the following:

1. Created 2 parts with base features of version A (2 individual parts)
2. Copied the parts and changed base features to version B (4 individual parts)
3. Created 2 copies of each part version where they have sliced the part in 2 halves, rendering us now on 8 individual parts
4. Creates 2 copies of those files where they reduce a pattern of a forming surface in order to optimize inventor performance (Not really doing much difference) which now have rendered us into 16 individual parts which all are incredibly heavy for inventor to work with.

Now when I have to modify in that tool I have to spend 2 days to change just a dimension because the rebuild time takes so long time. Now I'm remodeling the part in order to reduce both time to spend 2 days on changing a dimension or 2 + create iassemblies to make things easier in my opinion.

Instead of having 16 individual parts which all basically are built the same, I have created an Ipart which contains all versions of the part. Since all configurations in the ipart share the dimensions which later might be modified, modifying those dimensions won't become a horrible experience anymore.

What do you think, is there a better way to do this? When I look into the list I know what is what but for someone else, this might be very confusing. How would you have done this?

[mcgyvr]

Without seeing the part and without knowing the specifics of why you need to jump through all those hoops I can't provide anything useful other than to say post the part or at the very least an image of it and may provide some actual details of why this seems to be so complicated...

You wrote all that and I have no idea of why you need to slice the part in half or why you need 16 iterations of a part..

Its always better to post details of the problem vs details on the solution you think you needed to do.. 

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Like Brian said, it is better to have a specific example so we can comment further. Designing a part is a science and an art. As long as it can get the job done and it can be repeated, it is a good approach. The only thing worries me from the table is dimension values. I am seeing 240m and 300m. Inventor part geometry is limited to 100m long and bounded within +-100m in X, Y, and Z directions. Any geometry beyond the limit can behave unpredictably. What geometry do these parameters drive?

Many thanks!