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FEATURE REQUEST: Itemised Composite Parts in Assembly BOMs
Alex_Benton
Member, csevp Posts: 5 PRO
Hello!
In my design process I'm making mechanical parts with a reasonably complex mechanism tying them together. When I'm developing, I like to add composite parts of all the groups of parts which are static relative to each other; these function as sub-assemblies for me. This approach lets me check the mechanism is working as intended and that there are no clashes etc, with the assembly updating dynamically as I make tweaks. This works great, but when I come to making a proper BOM for manufacturing, I can't see the items that make up each composite part, which is a deal breaker for this approach.
So I need to make a 'proper' assembly with individual parts before release for manufacture, and then either labouriously mate parts together, or use the group mate at input. The former is slow, and breaks when you change mate connector geometry (chamfers etc,) and the latter breaks when geometry in the part studio slightly changes. The only alternative I've seen is to import the part studio as rigid - but this only works when nothing within the part studio is moving relative to anything else. I want to model my parts together in the same part studio to keep component references and the feature tree clean.
So! Either I'd like to be able to selectively add components as rigid 'groups' which dynamically update with the part studio, or I'd like to be able to choose to itemise a composite part for a BOM. The latter I think would be most useful, as it's easier to add components to a composite part from the part studio, and you can do fun things with composites using custom features/featurescripts. It could be as simple as a checkbox in the composite part that determines whether it's itemised in the BOM or not, much like the open/closed option.
This would be way better than using group mates I think - would be great to see it happen!
Comments
I could see this being useful in some cases for sure…
However you might have missed that you can insert a part studio as rigid and then suppress any parts you don't actually want at the assembly level, which is pretty much the same end result as "selective" rigid groups.
You can also set an assembly to "promote components" to have it disappear from the structured BOM so it can become essentially a "virtual" sub-assembly.
You could have a PS with a bunch of parts inserted as rigid in a couple different assemblies as a way to create multiple rigid "groups" at the top level.
Also forgot to mention but if you want to fasten a bunch of things designed in a single PS, you can use the "multi-mate connector" FS to quickly add an identical MC to a bunch of parts at once an then fasten them at the assembly level so they won't be affected by any changes in geometry…
Use multi-mate-connector. You will never use another fastening method again for parts designed together.
I've had zero luck with rigid assemblies, because I haven't figured out how to set them to use released parts. My workflow didn't align with them. I was so excited when they came out,