"Can't you just rename the assembly as something new and change the dimensions?"

[jyager]

Question like these from management....anyone else ever get them?

We've got an air handler that for a multitude of reasons a utility has had redesigned once, and now is asking for a third design that's a combination of the first two.

It's about 1350/120 and is an tube steel frame generator skeleton with a multitude of accociative sheet metal panels and bolt on frame members and enclosures.

It took me about 40 hours the first time, to model and about create about 5 pages of drawings and details, about the same for the second go around.

Best case scenario, if they just wanted to tweak this current design I could go in and adjust the skeleton of the frame and a couple parts and it would probably take a couple days to go through and tweak the existing .iam and drawings....problem is, they want this new design in addition to the old one.

When I say just put in another 40 hours people start freaking out, like I'm trying to pad hours onto renaming a word document and editing a few sentences. "If we got a similar AHU next year we'd have to remodel it?"...when I try explaining that I can reuse the parts but renaming 120 files and reassociating them would probably take almost as long as just doing it from scratch (obviously some parts that aren't associative are easily reused)...the eyes glaze over.

[mcgyvr]

It depends...

on exactly whats changing..

There are numerous tools to make the process easier..

iassemblies

iparts

pack and go

copy/replace

,etc...

It depends 100% on exactly whats changing.. 

To me if a product is very similar to another just a few dims change then its simply a great time for iassy/iparts and no way should it take 40+ hours do handle that..

But if 120+ parts are really changing then obviously is a larger task.. It might come down to your process/familiarity with the tools Inventor has for this kind of stuff though..

I suspect your process might be flawed.. but I have no idea EXACTLY what is changing for your situation..

[Mark.Lancaster · Accepted solution]

You may want to consider using iLogic Design Copy if you don't have Vault.   That way you can copy your original design and drawings to make a new design.   See this article on iLogic Design Copy: http://synergiscadblog.com/2014/09/23/copy-files-easily-with-ilogic-design-copy-even-without-ilogic-...

[jyager]

I'm sure my process is not perfect. I'm only about 5 years deep into Inventor and always learning.

In the first case the AHU was originally one unit with associative panels attached. The second go around the unit got divided into a modular two section unit with extra tube steel members added to the frame where mechanically fastened seams would be, between the two sections. So the majority of the panels had to be reworked to match the new clear dimensions between tubes. Reworking the model from scratch took about 12 hours. 5 pages of weld details took the remainder of the time.

Unfortunately, a similar air handler to these guys means anything with an inlet and a discharge. All of our equipment is retrofit....I've been here 19 years and never seen the same thing come through the door twice, even identical "products" are dissimilar just to accommodate for existing obstructions/connections etc. It makes it very hard to develope any logical path for standardizing iAssemblies...there's a very small amount of reuseable parts.

[jyager]

Thanks, I'll look into that.

[MechMachineMan]

^ What McGyvr said.

It happens a lot for our product lines where we reference it as a library to keep parts from getting overwritten, then use Save and Replace from the top of the tree down to modify parts/assemblies that need changing.

This works well because for similar parts we can usually replace model reference in the drawings and have the dimensions/data be close to correct.

This saves a lot of time in rework.

[jyager]

I have actually used the replace model reference in the past. This previous change was just so dramatic in regards to weld changes it made it difficult.

[JDMather]

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jyager wrote:

When I say just put in another 40 hours people start freaking out, like I'm trying to pad hours onto renaming a word document and editing a few sentences. ....

---

Unfortunately it often takes twice as long to develop and perfect alternate workflows to speed things up for future work.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I am using Professional 2018 and I can not find the " ilogic design center". I want to modify and rename an existing assembly by modifying existing parts.

[JDMather]

Do you have your files open?

Can you post screen shot of what you see?  (Windows Snipping tool)