Assembly of (sub)assemblies, building a large, tedious battery pack

james_wiger23610

Hello, CAD newbie here...

I'm converting a car to an electric vehicle. The individual batteries are bricks (2.6x5x8in) and there are going to be 72 of them.
It's very tedious for me to make 72 copies of one part and mate them all together. Can I stick say, six of them together as a sub-assembly then assemble a few six-packs?

brucebartlett

I Imagine down the track the assemblies will be used to produce Bill of Materials, a part studio pattern could mess with this as they are individual parts and would come out on a BOM as 72 separate items not 1 item repeated qty 72 times, most likely not an issue for you at this stage so I'd pattern in the part studio.


This what a assy BOM may look like in Onshape.

brucebartlett

Don't see why you could couldn't do in groups of six. Would you plan to dissolve sub assy's at any point?

Alternatively you could pattern them in the part studio then group mate them in the assy? This would give 72 individual parts but no BOMs yet so can not see any issues.

james_wiger23610

Bruce,
   I'm not familiar with BOM. Are you saying I need to start the process in the part studio? Or am I making a group of six in the assembly area? Thanks for the help.

pete_yodis

james_wiger23610 said:

Bruce,
   I'm not familiar with BOM. Are you saying I need to start the process in the part studio? Or am I making a group of six in the assembly area? Thanks for the help.

"BOM" - Definition:  Bill of Material

andrew_troup

james_wiger23610 said:

Bruce,
   I'm not familiar with BOM. Are you saying I need to start the process in the part studio? Or am I making a group of six in the assembly area? Thanks for the help.

Either would work, but I would probably use "Linear Pattern" in the Part Studio to array the six pack, make another Part Studio with just an array of mate connectors, perhaps driven by a sketch which could use "Sketch Pattern" to create an array of points....
Then insert both parts into an assembly, and mate the (multiple instances of the) six pack to the mate connectors.

I'm by no means certain every inch of this is kosher, but it's a discussion starter, if nothing else!

brucebartlett

I Imagine down the track the assemblies will be used to produce Bill of Materials, a part studio pattern could mess with this as they are individual parts and would come out on a BOM as 72 separate items not 1 item repeated qty 72 times, most likely not an issue for you at this stage so I'd pattern in the part studio.


This what a assy BOM may look like in Onshape.

lougallo

You could try using this now... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onshape-bom/jmihmfjmcdiefeinjcobfcphpiafoefj?authuser=0 ;-)