Automation of Break feature in Assembly drawing

[Anonymous]

Hi Experts, 🙂

I'm fairly new in this automation field. I've been working on one of the project of automation of break command in drawing of an assembly model. The main reason for automating break command in drawing is that my assembly is quite large and long which requires around 4-5 breaks to show all the parts and fit in sheet so I want to fix break's position which will save my time whenever any part in assembly gets updated.

I've been able to achieve desired result in drawing of a part model (I've shared link below, thanks to this forum only), but not getting how to implement this in assembly model. 

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-customization/how-to-set-start-and-end-points-to-automate-br...

 There're few points I want to understand related to this automating break operation in drawing of assembly model.

• As for part model we've used named entity command to name the Edge / Face, Could we use this method in Assembly model as well ?? Coz I couldn't find a way to create named entity in Assembly. (Please note I don't want to make named face / edge in child part of the assembly and then retrieve them in assembly model. This'd be very long process just only for break automation in drawing.)
• First question has led me to second one.. If this "named entity" method doesn't work for Assembly, then could we find a way to make break feature in drawing view from position of the "workplane." in assembly model ?? So by just moving a "workplane" position in assembly, break feature in drawing gets updated ?? If anyone could write just a fairly simple code for this it would be beneficial for me to understand how these features work in drawing automation.
• If anyone could find any other way of automating break command in assembly drawing, it'll be also appreciated.

Thanks in advance

@WCrihfield @JDMather @mcgyvr  @Ralf_Krieg @A.Acheson 

[A.Acheson]

@Anonymous 

The workplane approach sounds like it would work. I haven’t found position by workplane but this link deals with it in a part and workpoint.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-customization/ilogic-create-text-in-flat-pattern/td-p/10201838

If your looking to get it from an assembly you would need to lay it out differently. There most likely a sample in the API help or on this forum.  

[Anonymous]

Hi @A.Acheson ,

Thanks for the response.

There are many article out there for parts file but for getting plane position in assembly drawing I couldn't find anything. If you could draw me there it'd be helpful. I'm just looking for fairly simple code to use plane's position in assembly drawing for automating break operation.

Thanks

[A.Acheson]

So I had an attempt to control/read the assembly workplane position through the drawing. Turns out this is not supported.
If you use the add workplane snippet fro an assembly the tooltip says unsupported. I also didn’t see a snippet to get position by workplane either so you will likely need a workpoint.

So I thought about creating a part(drawing break)  just to hold the workplanes and workpoints needed. These can be added/changed from the drawing using add and set workplane with offset. 

If you wanted to get  the range  box size of the assembly and transfer this to wokplanes/workpoints and offset from these points you might get a relative position to the assembly. This would need to be done in the assembly in advance. 

The above is all just theory. I am a relative novice to this and haven’t really built anything that works aside from testing. Hopefully it gives you a step in the right direction. 

Here I see a method for translating assembly workpoint to sheet points which you can the get position of.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-customization/ilogic-annotation-placement/td-p/9674654