Geometry Analysis and tagging

[karl_doucas]

I'm looking for custom programming solutions or ideas to analyze model part geometry with recognition for same or unique parts identification.  Interested in an automated tool that will scan and assess all parts within an assembly and segregate same and different pieces for tagging and BOM output.  Thx

[JelteDeJong]

Finding duplicates in an assembly will be very difficult. If you could settle for an almost perfect solution you could check the bounding boxes of each part. And assume that if the bounding box is the same that the part is the same. Wich of course doesn't have to be true.

But why do you have the same geometry in the different files? Have you looked at the feature "Duplicate Search" in the Autodesk vault? It might help you.

[karl_doucas]

Thanks for your reply.

The premise of my issue is that a model can be built many ways in Inventor and a user may not always know what name to give a part or effectively by able to organize same or unique geometries as they progress making of parts.  For example if you model 50 parts and each one is named consecutively, you could potential build part 51 exactly identical to part number 5.  If you extrapolate this to a model with 5000 parts, there will be a potential mix of geometries that are unique but some that may be identical.  I am looking for a solution in Inventor that can analyze these 5000 individual pieces of geometry (within assemblies or not) and tag with a user defined reference each piece and quantify them in a BOM.  This represents a very standard approach to designing for manufacturing.