Looking for help organizing Tube and Pipe

[pball]

I can't figure out a good way to organize what I'm working on, so I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions. I'll try to describe what I'm trying to do as best I can.

I have a main assembly with many subcomponents and I need to add some pipe and hose in that main assembly. Everything is good to start as I can start a Tube and Pipe run and it creates a sub assembly which I put fittings and run the hose in. That's good because then I have an assembly with the fittings and hose in it.

The problem is after that first run, I can't find a way to make a new sub assembly where I can put other fittings and do other hose runs. Is there a way to do that or are you stuck putting all pipe/hose runs into a single sub assembly.

I could make a normal sub assembly and do a tube and pipe inside of that, however that makes it hard. Because if I'm in the main assembly and go to edit that sub assembly Inventor locks the tube and pipe feature while editing sub assemblies. What is hard about that is I can't see the main assembly while doing the hose run in the sub assembly if I have to open the sub assembly by itself, so I can't see what I have to route around.

[jletcher]

Have you made one? Have not done pipe run in a long time but after you make them can you Demote?

[cwhetten]

You have to have all of your pipe runs in the one Tube & Pipe subassembly.

I usually create a separate assembly just for creating my pipe & hose runs.  Then, in my main assembly, I separately place the .iams for each run.  This way, I can place them anywhere in the heirarchy that I want, since it's just like placing any regular subassembly.

When the runs are placed this way, they are not adaptive in the main assembly.  And, since the actual runs were created in a separate assembly, every time the main assembly is modified, it doesn't have to recompute every single pipe and hose run.  It's much faster and more stable than creating the runs in the main assembly.

The only drawback is, when using vault, I have to remember that the controlling assembly for the tube & pipe runs is in a separate assembly.  It gets kinda tricky when doing copy design, but there are ways of dealing with it.  The benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.

[pball]

The problem I'd run into having separate assemblies is not seeing the items from the main assembly I have to route around. If Inventor would allow editing of tube and pipe runs while editing a sub assembly it wouldn't be a problem. It's begining to look like I'm kinda SOL with doing it how I'd prefer.

[cwhetten]

I usually insert just the components where my route begins and ends, and any that I have to route around, through, etc.  If these components are already in a subassembly of their own, then it's even easier--just insert the subassembly into the new "dummy" assembly.

Either way, it's a little extra work to get this dummy assembly set up, but if you are doing a lot of piping, it's definitely worth it.