Assembly vs Multipart studio

david_Laframboise

I'm into design of fuel tank made mostly of aluminum sheets metal, see attached file. The tank is welded all together and no part is free from moving relative to another.

I want to create a template that would allow me to easily change various configuration such as heads size, manholes positions and quantity, tank length, compartements length and number, etc. I have a library of the all the various part.

I was wondering what would be the best practice to create this. 

A - Creating a assembly with loads of complicated mates relating parts from one another. In this case, I can easily extract a BOM but any change in design could unleash numerous headache.

B - Creating a multi-part studio with various derived parts. This allow easy changes in design and configurations. However, problem is that I can't extract a BOM from a part studio because no parts can replicated itself into a part studio.

Is there a way to combined both world ? A master sketch with mates inserted into the assembly thats allows me to rapidly place parts into the assembly ? 

We started with Onshape about a month ago and we want to start on the right foot.

Thank you!

MichaelPascoe

There should be a way to combine both. Check out this post about configurations, it may give you some ideas.
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/70662#Comment_70662

tim_hess427

@david_Laframboise - I agree with Michael. It sounds like assembly configurations combined with part studio configurations make the most sense here. You can create your parts in as many (or few) part studios as necessary and use configurations to device the size and other options. Then, a configured assembly can bring together the correct configuration of each part for the end product.

https://cad.onshape.com/help/Content/assembly_configurations.htm

matthew_stacy

@david_Laframboise, can you make your document public and post the URL?  In my opinion whether or not to create an assembly depends largely upon whether not multiple instances of any parts occur in the finished assembly.