What is the best method for creating holes in these parts?

[Anonymous]

I am creating a frame for a body on a vehicle, the members of the frame consist of box and rectangular box section and are assembled together using a simple L shape bracket with nuts and bolts. I have created an iPart for the L shape bracket, for two different sizes of the bracket (different hole spacings for each size) and amirrored version of the bracket.

Obviously I need the frame members to have the same holes as each of the brackets so I can bolt everything together. I want the holes in the frame members to be associative incase I need to change the position or size of the holes.

What is the best way of doing this?

• Create the holes in the assembly - Quick, easy no good for creating drawings of each part
• Create sketch on each of the frame members and project the holes of the brackets in the assembly - Works but creates lots of adaptive parts, i read somewhere that adaptive parts should be kept to a minimum? (probably when creating large assemblies)
• Create an iFeature for the holes, use this iFeature to create the holes on L shape bracket iPart and reuse iFeature to create holes on frame members - Have played about with this idea but not successful
• Extract iFeature from L shape bracket iPart to create some sort of Table ifeature and use ifeature on frame members?

My knowledge of iFeatures and iParts is quite limited but the best method has got to be something to do with using these tools, If anyone can share some knowledge that would be great.

Cheers, Joe

[cbenner · Accepted solution]

Have you looked into the Bolted Connection feature on the Design tab?  Should be able to do what you need right there and install the fasteners at the same time.

[Anonymous]

The last time I used it in an assembly it made it really sluggish, perhaps it would be okay with this one as there would be less connections.

If i use the holes in the L shape bracket as references for the bolted connection, and I decide to change those hole sizes how can I get the BC size to update with it?

[Anonymous]

You may be able to derive the bracket parameters into the Frame Members Part Files in order to place the holes. This, imho, is more reliable and causes far less issues than adaptivity. I just made a video earlier today describing how to derive one part into another. Jump to 5:30 to see the derive method of relating parts. You may have to view full screen in order to read the text in the wordpad window.

[pcrawley · Accepted solution]

Bolted Connection - absolutely the way to go.  It does everything you asked for in the original post - it creates holes in the frame-members at a part level so they detail correctly, they update when things move, and you can create templates of standard connection types making adding fasteners quick and easy. (The bolted connection tool will also detect multiple holes in your bracket and populate them all at the same time if you want it to.)

The sluggishness you experienced may be due to the auto-update feature of bolted connections.  Have a look at this post  I wrote a while ago detailing how you can speed things up.

The other speed-up trick you can employ that works really well is to create sub-assemblies in your Frame Generator assembly.  Make sure you use the "Demote using Frame Generator" - not the normal "Demote" so you preserve the intelligence of the frame.  You can add your fasteners within the frame sub-assemblies and thereby reduce the number of top-level components and improve overall assembly performance.

@pcrawley - This reply has been edited by the moderation team as the legacy links were no longer valid 

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your responses, those tips definatley speed it up a bit and it seems to work better in 2015 than 2014