Skeletal Model Drawings

[Anonymous]

I am working on a project that takes all possible options that sales offers for a given product line and builds them in a skeletal model. I have created the model successfully but am stuck on how to create drawings for the skeletal parts. For instance one part on the unit, based on available options, creates aprox. 23,000 different variations. Using standard dimensions results in dimensions becoming unattached when different options are implemented in the design. If anyone has any suggestions on how to create one or a small amount of drawings I would appreciate it. By the way all most all of the parts are sheet metal parts with the flat pattern and bend lines being the most important features need in the drawings.

[Anonymous]

Perhaps hiding the dimensions in the IDW and showing a letter variable and
then inserting a Excel table with the min/max range for each of the variable
allowed for each given dimension.

Blair

wrote in message news:5415807@discussion.autodesk.com...
I am working on a project that takes all possible options that sales offers
for a given product line and builds them in a skeletal model. I have created
the model successfully but am stuck on how to create drawings for the
skeletal parts. For instance one part on the unit, based on available
options, creates aprox. 23,000 different variations. Using standard
dimensions results in dimensions becoming unattached when different options
are implemented in the design. If anyone has any suggestions on how to
create one or a small amount of drawings I would appreciate it. By the way
all most all of the parts are sheet metal parts with the flat pattern and
bend lines being the most important features need in the drawings.

[Anonymous]

This is where we started but there has been a lot of resistance from manufacturing. Also because the model changes are so drastic this would require a fairly large table or a number of different prints.

[Anonymous]

Perhaps you can use "Retrieve Dimensions" to extract the dimensions of your
skeleton part?

The dimensions in the sketches of your Skeleton Part(s) should always be
available...

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T. Ham
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CDS Engineering BV

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[Anonymous]

All of the parts are created using planes and axis so there are very few dimensions that can be retrieved. I can create dummy features that contain the different dimension sets that I want for the different option configurations but this only works for the formed views. We are currently looking at dimensioning the flat patten programmatically.

The goal is for this to be an automated process for each order that sales enters.

[Anonymous]

are you using IV11? This seems like a perfect application of iAssemblies and iParts

[Anonymous]

No this project was started over a year ago and is now too far along to switch over to iassemblies.

[Anonymous]

Make the skeleton Excel driven with drop down boxes with the min/max ranges
for each of the variables, then when sales fills in the the variables the
correct drawing is produced. Insert a BMP in the Excel showing what the
variables are.
wrote in message news:5416368@discussion.autodesk.com...
This is where we started but there has been a lot of resistance from
manufacturing. Also because the model changes are so drastic this would
require a fairly large table or a number of different prints.

[Anonymous]

It started out that this was all controlled by Excel. Now though the picks from sales are coming out of our manufacturing data management software. This is then used to calculate the values for all of the parameters for the master part. This information is then passed to IV updating all parts and drawings in the process.

[Anonymous]

We have the perfect usage for iAssemblies as well, and we have resisted
sales pressure to do this type of thing BEFORE iAssemblies (because we
assumed they were imminent) and we are now holding back until R12 until any
iAssemblies wrinkles are ironed out.

That's the benefit of staying behind the technology curve - not having to do
things twice.

wrote in message news:5416519@discussion.autodesk.com...
No this project was started over a year ago and is now too far along to
switch over to iassemblies.

[Anonymous]

come on John, everybody's doing it 😉

[Anonymous]

Sure, sure, you go right on ahead and let me know how it went. I like to
watch . . 😜


wrote in message news:5416972@discussion.autodesk.com...
come on John, everybody's doing it 😉

[Anonymous]

Do the dimensions become unattached because a particular variation doesn't
have the necessary feature (for example if the variation doesn't have a hole
that dimension references)? If this is the case you might be able to use a
macro or a simple add-in to cleanup the unattached dimensions.

Otherwise, you might be able to use more robust geometric entities like work
features or unconsumed sketch geometry to create dimensions.

wrote in message news:5415807@discussion.autodesk.com...
I am working on a project that takes all possible options that sales offers
for a given product line and builds them in a skeletal model. I have created
the model successfully but am stuck on how to create drawings for the
skeletal parts. For instance one part on the unit, based on available
options, creates aprox. 23,000 different variations. Using standard
dimensions results in dimensions becoming unattached when different options
are implemented in the design. If anyone has any suggestions on how to
create one or a small amount of drawings I would appreciate it. By the way
all most all of the parts are sheet metal parts with the flat pattern and
bend lines being the most important features need in the drawings.

[Anonymous]

Thats the issue more or less expect that at some point it may have that feature again and the dimension wont reattach itself.

[Anonymous]

Yes, this technique requires you to have a variation that is a super set of
all variations, meaning a variation that will have all the features that you
will encounter in other variations. If you then make a drawing of that
variation and use it as the base for all variations you should be able to
simply cleanup dimensions that go bad.

wrote in message news:5417770@discussion.autodesk.com...
Thats the issue more or less expect that at some point it may have that
feature again and the dimension wont reattach itself.