Inventor 101: consolidating identical items in parts list.

[Anonymous]

I started off making a multibody part … a number of the bodies are identical … I created one and then mirrored it across a few planes so in the end I have 8 … used Make Component, so now I have an assembly that includes 8 identical parts labeled Solid1, Soild 2, etc.

How do I create a parts list that does not treat each identical part as a separate line item? All 8 parts should be in one row with a qty of 8, not 8 rows with a quantity of 1.    

This something that Solidworks just … does. It identifies identical bodies and automatically consolidates them. I'm hoping there is a similar feature in Inventor that perhaps I need to turn on? 

[Cadmanto]

In your drawing, RC on your parts list.  Select, 

Then when this dialog come up select, 

This window will appear.  Check the box indicated.

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[Curtis_W]

Hi @Anonymous, 

Welcome to the Inventor forums.

As mentioned you just need to change the part number in the BOM for each of the resulting components for them to be merged.

There are a couple of ways that this could be made more automatic... if you're interested in learning more post back a some screen shots and further explanation of your typical designs and I'll see if I can offer some suggestions.

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

Changing the part number designation in the BOM does suck the parts together into one row when the enable row merge is turned on, but it's kinda cheating. If I go back to my model and, say, add a hole to one of the identical bodies (thereby making it not identical any more), the BOM does not adjust to this change.

I'm trying to avoid those "gotchas" where the drawing does not automatically update to any changes in the model. 

[swalton]

I don't use multi-body modeling for assemblies, so my advice/comments may not be useful.

The identical body detection in Solidworks sounds helpful.  It looks like Inventor does not do that, so if you have an identical part, model it once-and-only-once.

If you must repeat the body in your multi-body part, don't export the extra bodies from the multi-body part to the assembly. 

If that is not possible, delete them from the assembly, and use conventional constraints to position the repeat solids.  You can make work geometry in the multi-body part to position these repeat components, if you want to have a single place to edit positions.

[mcgyvr]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Changing the part number designation in the BOM does suck the parts together into one row when the enable row merge is turned on, but it's kinda cheating. If I go back to my model and, say, add a hole to one of the identical bodies (thereby making it not identical any more), the BOM does not adjust to this change.

I'm trying to avoid those "gotchas" where the drawing does not automatically update to any changes in the model. 

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If you make a change to only one then the part number shouldn't be the same anymore.. Change it and it will unmerge..

Yes its a manual process..

Yes this is one big con of multibody workflows that should have been better handled.. (Its reason #1 I do not use them ever)..

I don't know how SWx handles this but wouldn't be surprised if its functions in this matter were better than Inventor..