"Installation" type drawings
"Installation" type drawings
(OP)
Does anyone have any experience with "installation" drawings using SolidWorks? Let me give a brief description of what I mean by an "installation" drawing. An installation drawing will typically show a part or group of parts being installed onto a much larger machine, or into a facility (or a room of a facility). Most often, the larger machine is shown in phantom.
An example:
Our company has a relatively complex structural assembly that we install into a building. This assembly has many electro-mechanical assemblies mounted to it. These electro-mechanical assemblies each have critical installation and alignment instructions. The installation of these components are each handled on separate drawings. The drawing will typically show some amount of interface to the existing structure (again, usually in phantom). The upper assembly drawing is usually not very detailed, it simply identifies all of the installation drawings and uses balloon callouts to identify where they are installed.
Now if you can imagine, the upper assembly is used on some sort of room or facility type drawing and is documented in a similar installation fashion.
Now the question:
The ideal method of creating these assemblies (and any type of assembly) in SolidWorks would be to have all of the electro-mechanical sub-assemblies installed into their appropriate upper assembly. Then to have that upper assembly installed into the appropriate next level up etc. The drawing of the upper assembly would be fairly detailed, with lots of info regarding the complexity of the component alignment. There would probably be many sheets, all with details that would each be similar to what our "installation" drawings look like. Unfortunately this type of document is undesirable for our company (don't want to go into it).
The current proposed method for generating the "installation" assemblies is to create an assembly consisting of the structural assembly and one of the electro-mechanical assemblies. This would be repeated for all of the electro-mechanical "installation" assemblies. In the context of the drawing, the structural assembly would be set to phantom. Now the problem that arises using this method is when all of the "installation" assemblies are put into the upper assy, the structure is repeated many times. The way around this is to have two configurations at the "installation" level, one showing the structure (to be used for the drawing) and one with the structure suppressed (to be used on the upper assembly).
This method seems a bit kludgy, but is the best that I have come up with. Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
An example:
Our company has a relatively complex structural assembly that we install into a building. This assembly has many electro-mechanical assemblies mounted to it. These electro-mechanical assemblies each have critical installation and alignment instructions. The installation of these components are each handled on separate drawings. The drawing will typically show some amount of interface to the existing structure (again, usually in phantom). The upper assembly drawing is usually not very detailed, it simply identifies all of the installation drawings and uses balloon callouts to identify where they are installed.
Now if you can imagine, the upper assembly is used on some sort of room or facility type drawing and is documented in a similar installation fashion.
Now the question:
The ideal method of creating these assemblies (and any type of assembly) in SolidWorks would be to have all of the electro-mechanical sub-assemblies installed into their appropriate upper assembly. Then to have that upper assembly installed into the appropriate next level up etc. The drawing of the upper assembly would be fairly detailed, with lots of info regarding the complexity of the component alignment. There would probably be many sheets, all with details that would each be similar to what our "installation" drawings look like. Unfortunately this type of document is undesirable for our company (don't want to go into it).
The current proposed method for generating the "installation" assemblies is to create an assembly consisting of the structural assembly and one of the electro-mechanical assemblies. This would be repeated for all of the electro-mechanical "installation" assemblies. In the context of the drawing, the structural assembly would be set to phantom. Now the problem that arises using this method is when all of the "installation" assemblies are put into the upper assy, the structure is repeated many times. The way around this is to have two configurations at the "installation" level, one showing the structure (to be used for the drawing) and one with the structure suppressed (to be used on the upper assembly).
This method seems a bit kludgy, but is the best that I have come up with. Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
-Shaggy






RE: "Installation" type drawings
RE: "Installation" type drawings
The drawback I see to that is I would have multiple drawing files all referencing the same assembly, albeit different configs of the assembly, but the same assembly none the less.
-Shaggy
RE: "Installation" type drawings
Chris
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RE: "Installation" type drawings
RE: "Installation" type drawings
The only real drawback to that method is in our multi-user environment, multiple people will not be able to work on that assembly at once. Picture several different projects being installed onto that structure. We would have to coordinate who has the write permissions on the assembly file. Once the assembly is complete however, the drawings could be created separately using a read-only version of the assembly.
-Shaggy
RE: "Installation" type drawings
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RE: "Installation" type drawings
I think what you are proposing is essentially what I am planning. Each user will create a subassembly for their project. Within that subassembly, they will all use the same structure part. They will mount their project to the structure and document it.
The problem occurs when all of these subassemblies need to be shown together when the structure is installed into its next assembly.
BTW I am not using any top down design for this project. The structure is what it is, we are just mounting to it.
Thanks again for the ideas.
-Shaggy
RE: "Installation" type drawings
RE: "Installation" type drawings
-Shaggy
RE: "Installation" type drawings
RE: "Installation" type drawings
I did some brief searching in the SolidWorks helps. an assembly envelope might be what I am looking for. Does anyone have experience using assembly envelopes? Is this their intent?
-Shaggy