Going from Part to Assembly to Drawing and BoM?

luke_peters

Hello all. I've been using Onshape for a long time now, but generally only for making single-piece parts, most often for 3D printing. I can make some pretty darn complex pieces, but if I ever need to make two pieces that mate together, I simply choose "New" when making an extrusion or what have you, and then export them separately from the parts list sidebar. 

However, I'm ready to start making more complicated machines with joints and screw holes pre-planned and such. I'm just not sure how to do this, and would like to know what other people's workflow is like. Specifically, if I'm trying to make all the features I'm creating based off the size of existing features, how then do I split them to make an assembly...? Or, like I've been doing, do you just make every feature a new part in the one part studio, and then import them all into an assembly so you can slide them around and mate them and such?

I also have a project where I'm trying to make some furniture out of a piece of plywood. I have the 4'x8' plywood sheet modeled, and a sketch on top for all my cuts - how best would I turn this into actual cut pieces to put together in an assembly? For this, I'd also like an easy BoM and drawings (but I can figure this out myself later after I get the assembly basics down).

I presume this has all already been answered by Onshape's help videos or smart youtubers, so if you have a link to a tutorial you like I would appreciate that very much. 

Thank you for reading through my newb ramble. For as long as I've been using Onshape/CAD in general, this next step seems like scary magic to me. The closest I've gotten is when I modeled an original Pixel: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/877f8a4ae9577602e970c2ed/w/0d45111ec067fecbb37fb880/e/79689c179f693bf9e66e3967

But my workflow there was very silly, and I think I just duplicated the body to new part studios, added the glass, then deleted the body to keep the glass as its own part. 

Thank you for any help you're able to provide!

nick_papageorge073

For smaller subassemblies, lets say 10-15 part range, "Mulit-Part Part Studio" is a great approach. It means you make all your parts in the same part studio. This way you can reference features from one part to make the next part. Here is the course on it:

https://learn.onshape.com/courses/fundamentals-multi-part-part-studios

There are 2 other ways: In context part studios, and Derived. These are usually used for more complex assemblies.

luke_peters

This is a great start to understanding - thank you.