Passing assembly configuration through to part studio

david_brophy

Assembly configurations are separate to part studio configurations. This is flexible, but seems to cause significant duplication when the configuration is identical. Perhaps I'm missing something.

Consider my example:

The windows I'm buying are of a common design but in several sizes. I need to override the mass property of the assembly for each different size. The size is defined simply by height and width. 

* I've defined "Height" and "Width" variable features in my part studio, and driven all the subsequent features from these variables.
* I've created a list configuration in the part studio with entries for the four sizes: "1200x600", "1550x500", "820x500", "440x600".
* I've added configuration columns for the "#Width" and "#Height" variables in the part studio configuration table, and populated the values for the four different sizes:



* In the assembly, I've created another list configuration with the same entries for the four different sizes.
* I've inserted the six parts, and added a configuration column for each part to correctly set the part configuration for each of the assembly configurations.
* In the "Configures assembly properties" tab I've overridden the mass of the assembly for each of the four different sizes.







This works fine but there's two problems:

* The part studio and the assembly use four common sizes, but that data is entered twice. 
* The configuration for each part in the assembly must be entered separately as its own column. 

Am I missing a neat way to simplify this?

eric_pesty

You could skip creating the lists in the part studio by using configuration variables there. The only downside is that you would need columns for width and height of each part in you assembly.
One trick for speeding up the data entry in the configuration table is that you can select all the parts from the tree and right click => "change configuration" for all of them and this lets you set the configuration variable to the same value.
Another option which may or may not be acceptable would be to use a composite part instead of an assembly for your window (if you don't need a BOM and there are no moving parts).

david_brophy

I definitely want to have the four sizes selectable from a drop-down. The design is parametric, but we've ordered four distinct sizes which can't be changed so having the Width and Height parameters adjustable independently wouldn't be appropriate.

I've simplified slightly by combining some of the parts into composite parts, but we sill have more duplication than I'd like...

eric_pesty

You can have the drop-down in the assembly only, calling specific values of the configuration variables of the parts.
I.e. you don't need to create matching drop-downs if you don't need them in the part studio, saving you some work.

david_brophy

Yes I tried using a list configuration in the assembly and configuration variables in the part studio. This solves the first problem of the list values being duplicated in the part studio and assembly... but the problem of having a large and unwieldy configuration panel in the assembly is much worse:

Now we have a column for "Width" and "Height", but these columns need to be duplicated for each of the parts on each row of the table, all with duplicated data. This is an intentionally simplified example, so in real world usage this table would quickly turn into a nightmare:

david_brophy

BTW thanks for the tip about composite parts - this definitely helps simplify significantly, but even with the parts grouped like this we still have a problem.

david_brophy

In the part studio I've simplified by driving all the sketches and features from a variable feature, then the configuration panel just needs to drive the variable feature.

I was looking for a similar simplification in the assembly view, but it doesn't seem like you can drive a variable in a variable studio from the configuration panel...

eric_pesty

You will still have to set it for each part in the assembly.
However you can set it for all parts at once (no need to even look at the configuration table). Select all the parts, right click and "change configuration" set the variable to "configure" if not already done and any change you make is applied to all the selected parts.
So it doesn't really matter how many columns you have in the table when you do it that way.