Help Making Configurable Tube

Kyler_Walker

I regularly rely on configurable parts to make changes in higher level assemblies without breaking mates.  I have configured many parts and generally understand how to do so.  However, I am struggling to figure out what the best architecture would be for creating a configurable tube.  The properties that need to be configured are OD, wall thickness, and length.  Ideally, I would like to configure material too.  The part numbers need to be dependent on OD and wall thickness (and material if it's configured), but not length.  Part numbers could depend on length if by the way of showing the length after a hyphen at the end of the part number, but I don't think Onshape allows this.  Anyway, I would like to see the length in some form in a BOM.  At this point, I have pretty much given up the idea of making material configurable because my available wall thicknesses are material dependent and Onshape doesn't allow configuration options to depend on higher level configuration inputs.  This is unfortunate because it means I will lose mates if I want to change my tube material.  To get the length to display in my BOM, I have tried making a custom property called "Length."  I can manually set this property for discrete lengths in the configured properties table, but I can't seem to make it a continuous function of a configuration variable.  The Frame feature seems to get part way to solving the length display problem.  At least it provides a way to see how long a tube is, but I can't figure out how to display its "Length" property without making a Cut List in a drawing.  I would really like to see the length in a BOM.  Also, the Frame feature would require me to configure the combination of OD and wall thickness, which I don't want. I would like OD and wall thickness to be independent inputs. 

If anyone has any creative ways of solving these problems, I would really appreciate hearing them.  I think that for a part, such as a tube, that has no topological changes between its variants, I should be able to create any variant by configuring one part.

Thanks!

MichaelPascoe

Some custom features should be able to get the job done for you. Here is one I found that you could tweak to fit your needs: SetProperties

If your company needs some custom features or API written, I can connect you with CADSharp.

See this example:

Kyler_Walker

@MichaelPascoe

Thanks!  You just solved the length display problem for me!  I needed this for all my 8020 extrusion too.

Kyler_Walker

@MichaelPascoe

If I manually over ride a property by typing in the properties window, is there a way undo the over ride so that feature sets the property again?  Is seems there must be a way to do this, but there is no obvious solution like a right click in the property field.

EDIT:

Never mind.  I found that there is a "Reset all" that solves that problem for me.  I don't know why you can't individually reset properties.

MichaelPascoe

Reset properties is the only way I know of that fixes this.