Create Assembly from Excel List

[Anonymous]

Is there a way to integrate the vault, inventor, and excel in such a way that I can have a list of part numbers in excel that I can generate assemblies from?

Basically excel would have

Part_1
Part_7
Part_13

It would then send a "get" command to the vault (to store them on the local drive), then load all parts into an unnamed assembly on inventor.

[mcgyvr · Accepted solution]

Its likely possible using ilogic/vb I believe in one way or another.. (not sure how that would check out the files,etc... as I'm far from the coding expert here but I suspect it may be possible)..

You would likely start an assembly and run the command and pick the excel file and then a "macro" of sorts would find and place all those parts into the assembly..

Then you can certainly check that into Vault,etc...

And you would need to do all the manual constraints,etc...

But "out of the box" that functionality doesn't exists..

[AlexFielder · Accepted solution]

I have done exactly this in the past.

We had an Excel file that contained a "structure" of sorts from the parent Assembly down into sub-assemblies and parts. The structure went up to 11 levels of sub-assembly deep, but in theory could have been infinite.

Because we had Vault Professional I was able to have the Excel addin search the Vault for any existing files and perform a get of those files before adding them to a new Assembly file inside of Inventor.

New files were created using a blank "pink disc" and given the iProperties available from within the Excel file. We then worked on paper copy drawings to create the parts one by one and then built assemblies from those collections of parts (inserting Content Centre Components as required).

This tool was written for Inventor Professional 2014 and Vault.

Let me know if you want to talk further about this.

[DFitting]

Would it be possible to see a sample of this code where it is creating the actual assemblies from the excel file?

[AlexFielder]

EDIT: this version is slightly newer and compiled for Inventor 2016:

https://github.com/AlexFielder/CreateAssemblyFromExcelAddin

Here you go:

https://github.com/AlexFielder/CreateAssemblyFromExcel

Reply here if you have any questions. 🙂

[j_kleijnjansY73VU]

Hello Alex,

Can i also get this version in inventor 2023 and office 365

Gr jos

[AlexFielder]

It is just a case of updating the references to use the Inventor 2023 .dlls and you should find it just works. There is a possibility that the Excel references may also require a tweak.