Section Book Creation from Multiple Assemblies, best methodology

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I've spent a full day looking and can't decide on the best thing to do.  We have various complex assemblies and we are trying to create Key sections in a drawing of the best bits of each one to create a best practice Section book (hope that makes sense).  This then needs to be put back into vault.

Ideally I'd like to open the assembly, create a quick drawing with a section slice, then add dims to that, that can be have the driven value over ridden in the future, (the section layout wont change but clearances / wall thickness' may) that is completely isolated from the live assemblies (for various reasons, Ie life cycle) and avoid having loads of linked geometry (some assemblies are 100 items plus)

I've tried various things deferred updates - Vault needs the assembly still

Derived part - the Section on seals merges so you can't see the detail

Creating a new part and cutting a section through the solid (not very easy to do and sill links the geometry), to do a drawing  of the section.

Am I missing a trick, or inventor simply not set up to do this.

I was thinking if there was a way I could create a new part, ground it, offset a plane where I need the cut then section every part into 3d line then just do a drawing of that would be the best option, but I don't seem to be able to get this to work.

Many Thanks,

Darren.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Darren,

Are you talking about section views in the drawing of an assembly? If yes, have you tried Slice View?

Many thanks!

[swalton · Accepted solution]

I suspect that you are fighting a fundamental assumption in Inventor:  Geometry in drawing files is driven by the 3D model shown in each view.  Vault will keep track of the dependencies.

What is the purpose of these Section drawings?  Are these details that will be build in the real world, or just something for training?  If the former, why don't you need full 3d models?  

One workaround is to export (not save as) the Inventor Drawings to an AutoCAD file (dwg or DXF).  Once in AutoCAD you can lie to yourself by overriding any dimension you want.  

[Anonymous]

Hi Thanks for the reply, this is the best method I've been able to find as well. 

The Sections are just for use within our team as a tool to aid commonality.  It's not the easiest to explain, but basically we have a ton of varying assemblies, using a combination of common and unique parts, but basically the interfaces all need to be the common (which currently different people have created different solutions).  Sections could literally be hand drawn for what they are (actually that's how this started, then I was asked just to create cad sections of the key area's. 

Having come from Automotive, this would be really easy on Catia, so still adjusting to inventor.  AutoCAD seems to be the answer and now done a complex section having started on inventor then transferred to autocad it's worked ok, just seems such a convoluted piece of software to use... (creating a mono chrome image to dump in PowerPoint was mentally comlex... haha, for a dumb non user like me anyway!).

Thanks for the response.

Darren.