Top Down and adaptive sketch's with Inventor

[roy7BB24]

Hi Folks

I use Inventor and Solidworks (Freelance Engineer), and I'm looking to start taking a more top down approach to my modelling. With solidworks this is relatively straight forward (if a little crashy), as for the most part, the references do what you expect. With Inventor I'm finding references between sketch's don't see to update properly. As a hypothetical example, if I was drawing a machine, and was specifically drawing the base frame, and I wanted to use a master sketch on the first level of the assembly to determine the overall size of the baseframe, then on the second level of the assembly (baseframe weldment), I wanted to use a second sketch that referenced the 1st level master sketch, to determine the over all size, and I also add in all the crossmembers and other features at this level. The goal here is that if I change the primary master sketch, all the other components throughout the assembly will update to reflect this change, I.e. if I shorten the base frame by 100mm in the master, the baseframe weldment will also update to take this change. At the moment, when I create my reference geometry it does not update correctly when I make changes. Is there a setting somewhere I'm missing, and I was also curios whats best practice here? 

[JDMather]

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@roy7BB24 wrote:

At the moment, when I create my reference geometry it does not update correctly when I make changes.

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Everything should work as expected.

Can you Attach your assembly here?

If the data is proprietary can you make up a dummy assembly that exhibits the same unexpected behavior.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! I guess in SWX, you are building all components within an assembly as internal parts, right? The closest workflow in Inventor is to build a multi-solid body part. Each solid body represents the part in an assembly. When the shape is defined, you can use Make Components command to push each solid as a part.

Traditional way of modeling is to keep each part as independent as possible (for reuse purpose) and then aggregate parts in an assembly as if building a Lego set. Whenever you need to reference geometry from another part, you will need to use cross-part reference workflow (Adaptive or Derive). Depending on your design intent, each workflow can be used specifically.

As JD mentioned, it should just work. However, there is a limitation in Inventor assembly sketch. The sketch is meant for creating assembly features (cutting across assembled parts), not meant for driving other components to change shape. I guess you are seeing some behaviors of such limitation.

Another option to consider is to use Fusion 360. It offers flexible modeling environment. Also, it supports internal components just like SWX. You can reference geometry within one design quite easily.

Many thanks!

[roy7BB24]

Hi, 

I've attached a file as requested. This is a hopper that I'm looking to build this from a master 3D sketch. The 3D sketch was relatively easy to make up, and if it can be done it would be nice to stick to this style, as the dream is that I can just tweak one or two dimensions and have the entire model update to suit. 

Kind Regards

Roydon Mackay