Assembly Drawings vs MPI's
Assembly Drawings vs MPI's
(OP)
The company I currently work for has been doing fully exploded assembly drawings for years. All assembly information is contained in the drawing. At my previous job it was detailed MPI's with lots of pictures and NO assembly drawings. Other engineers I know do mostly assembly drawings that are not exploded, assembly shown complete from different views with some cross section views.
What does your company do?
1) Fully exploded assembly drawings.
2) Picture based Manufacturing Process Instructions.
3) Unexploded assembly drawings.
What does your company do?
1) Fully exploded assembly drawings.
2) Picture based Manufacturing Process Instructions.
3) Unexploded assembly drawings.






RE: Assembly Drawings vs MPI's
Photo's or CAD images used only in manuals.
RE: Assembly Drawings vs MPI's
Chris
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 08 3.1
AutoCAD 08; CATIA V5
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
ctopher's blog
SolidWorks Legion
RE: Assembly Drawings vs MPI's
YMMV
--
Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2009 SP 2.1
Nvidia Quadro FX 1000
AMD Athalon 1.8 GHz 2 Gig RAM
RE: Assembly Drawings vs MPI's
The industry you are in may dictate how you make your assembly drawings.
Flores
RE: Assembly Drawings vs MPI's
Colin Fitzpatrick (aka Macduff)
Mechanical Designer
Solidworks 2008 SP 4.0
Dell 490 XP Pro SP 2
Xeon CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB
3D Connexion-SpaceExplorer
RE: Assembly Drawings vs MPI's
Matt Lorono
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group
and Mechnical.Engineering Yahoo! Group
RE: Assembly Drawings vs MPI's
I have had the privelege of working in two different companies with quite different production methodology.
1) Plastic parts assembled into complex sub assemblies in reasonable quantities with jigs etc to help, and semi-skilled labour
In this situation work instructions of pictures and words is critical for assembly. The relationships between parts, tolerances, and fits has all been created in the design phase and checked in pre-production. Defining drawings are created for parts, but these are used for tooling and checking (QA), not manufacturing.
2) Complex mechanical assemblies from fabricated parts, as one-offs with skilled labour
In this situation assembly drawings are used for fabricated parts, so that the final product dimensions and relationships are defined. Exploded assemblies are used for dissassemblable assemblies of standard parts ie bearings and bushes. Part drawings are created for standalone parts that fit into these assemblies.
You probably have to decide which of these situations suits you, or blend the two.
RE: Assembly Drawings vs MPI's
RE: Assembly Drawings vs MPI's
I always thought MPIs were for work instructions on assembly lines. The only time I messed with those were in my manufacturing engineering days so I haven't had to make any in a while...thank goodness.
RE: Assembly Drawings vs MPI's