×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Tabulated Part, Defining Features in Assembly

Tabulated Part, Defining Features in Assembly

Tabulated Part, Defining Features in Assembly

(OP)
Good day all,

I'm a relatively new SW user (about a month) coming from being a power user in Inventor. Most of the features and commands from one to the other are pretty parallel, and in fact I'm finding SW a bit more intuitive. I have yet to figure one thing out though that I would find helpful. Either it's a really easy solution or it may not be able to be done in SW.

I've gotten the hang, pretty quickly, of configurations and using the Design Table function. However, I am wondering if there is a way that I can create a part that asks me for a defining feature only when I place it into an assembly. This was something I did and took advantage of often in Inventor and am just trying to make my SW experience as equal as my AI experience.

For example: Say I need to create an assembly with different lengths of the same diameter piping. In Inventor, I could create a tabulated part and define the length of the pipe as a parameter to be defined later in an assembly. So I create a 1.5" Sch. 40 pipe part number, place it into an assembly and it prompts me to enter a length. That way, I don't have to create a model or configuration for each length of pipe I will need. This is very similar to how the Tool Box fasteners come in. Select a diameter and define a length. I just can't seem to recreate it!

Any help is appreciated, thank you.

RE: Tabulated Part, Defining Features in Assembly

The thing with the Toolbox fasteners is that all the standard lengths have already been defined. Perhaps it's because I've never thought to travel down this path, but I know of no way to insert a part into an assembly without it existing as a model. Even using routing, which creates pipes, would create a part file in the end. If your pipe example is something that you'll be doing a lot of, you should definitely check out routing if you have it. I suspect it'll work out for you.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWE
My Blog

RE: Tabulated Part, Defining Features in Assembly

emorel22,

You should check out all the capabilities of Toolbox. I'll bet it can do what you want, but you might have to add custom profiles. Look particularly at how it handles the insertion of structural shapes such as angle iron and channel. These are actually just sketch profiles that are extruded to the length. I do not use this feature so I can't tell you exactly how to do it, but it sure looks like the road you are looking for.

- - -Updraft

RE: Tabulated Part, Defining Features in Assembly

(OP)
Thanks for the insight guys.

Routing looks interesting, and the toolbox idea does as well. I didn't know you can add custom profiles to Toolbox. It's not specifically pipe I was looking for, just an example. I'll investigate what you guys have said and see how it goes.

Thanks again.

E. Morel
M.E.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources