differentiating identical parts

[Anonymous]

hey,

as a technological need in the industry we to find a way to differentiate identical parts and especially instances of the same part in an assembly document, either under the main assembly or sub-assemblies.

e.g. imagine an assembly document containing a home or office furniture. there are several parts that may or may not be identical, and also several hardware like hinges, scrows, dowel and more, that are used in the design, if I would like to pack this product in several packages to reduce their weight due to transportation issues, i need to differentiate such hardware in first stage to know that how many dowel/scrows/hinges should be included in drawer package and how many in top board package.

I was thinking I can do this by assigning custom iProperties to each part to differentiate them but as iProperties are stored in the main .ipt/.iam file, so any custom iProperty is written to all instances of the part. (not sure about it, correct me if I'm wrong please)

thanks in advance

[Sergio.D.Suárez]

Hi, I do not really know what he's trying to achieve. With this rule you will identify each part of the assembly, select it to see where it will be in the assembly, and then open the dialog box.
It may provide an idea of how to differentiate the parties through the instance of each occurrence. I recommend that you activate the rule before in a small document, since message boxes are often annoying when they are too many. regards

Sub Main()
    Call Check_Components(ThisDoc.Document.ComponentDefinition.Occurrences)
End Sub

Sub Check_Components(Occurrences As ComponentOccurrences)
	
Dim oCommand As CommandManager
Dim oControlDef As ControlDefinition ' Get control definition for the line command. 
oCommand = ThisApplication.CommandManager
	
    For Each oOcc In Occurrences
        If oOcc.DefinitionDocumentType = kAssemblyDocumentObject Then
            Call Check_Components(oOcc.SubOccurrences)
        ElseIf oOcc.DefinitionDocumentType = kPartDocumentObject Then

			oCommand.DoSelect(oOcc)
				
			Dim oInstance As String
			oInstance = Right(oOcc.name, Len(oOcc.name) - InStrRev(oOcc.name, ":"))
				
			Dim OccName As String
			OccName = Left(oOcc.name, (InStrRev(oOcc.name, ":", -1, vbTextCompare) - 1))
				
			MessageBox.Show("Part: " & OccName & vbLf & "   Instance Number: " & oInstance)

			oCommand.DoUnSelect(oOcc)
	  
        End If
    Next
	
End Sub

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous 

We do have kind of the same problem with identical valves, instruments, transmitters etc that need different TAG numbering. Adding a TAG number as custom iProperty won't do, because all valves get the same TAG/iproperty.

I think Inventor dev. is aware of this shortcoming, but it is for several years now....

PS: we have different parts/filenames now for the same type of valves to be ably to get it it's unigue TAG number through iproperties.

[Sergio.D.Suárez]

Hi, have you tried with ipart? maybe adding a custom property column. Geometrically it would be the same part, but for that property it would be another different part.

[Anonymous]

A valve of the same type and same size has the same ipart instance, so...?

[Sergio.D.Suárez]

We do have kind of the same problem with identical valves, instruments, transmitters etc that need different TAG numbering. Adding a TAG number as custom iProperty won't do, because all valves get the same TAG/iproperty. I think Inventor dev. is aware of this shortcoming, but it is for several years now.... PS: we have different parts/filenames now for the same type of valves to be ably to get it it's unigue TAG number through iproperties.

[Anonymous]

thank you for replay.

I think he is not trying to differentiate identical instances, but he is going through occurrences.

 I am thinking of storing instance name and number in the main assembly itself plus my other necessary data. 

do you have any idea that how much data can be stored in Custom iProperties per each property or in secret iProperties?