Part families & assembly drawings in NX - Arrangements?

[201181]

Hi,

I am working in Denmark at a large manufacturing company for fluid control components. The company use NX, and even though I am reasonably proficient in the use of NX, I have come across something new that I have not used before... Part families.

Their assemblies are set up where they may have one assembly, where one or more of the components could be a part family (hence, there are different versions of one or more parts). When they create their assembly model files, they will load all variations of the part familie into the one assembly (hence have parts overlapping), and when they create their assembly drawings, to prevent the overlapping parts from showing in the drawing, they will just hide all but the template part in the model tree. They then make their own custom part table with a column for each variation of the assembly, and use a matrix system to show which parts are in which assembly variation...

My question is, would arrangements be the best way to show and hide the components in the assembly drawing? Is their another method that is best? I am just trying to make sure I use the correct method, which was already designed into NX.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[201181]

Hi again,

So after some playing around (and searching on this very helpful forum), I have begun to use arrangements to create my different variations of an assembly, then choosing the appropriate arrangement when placing my base view in my drawing, hence automatically hiding components used in the other assembly variations.

So for the next question, the parts list. This company have a very particular way that they would like their parts list arranged. I have included an example of a typical (and simple) parts list below.

The arrangement is that they show all of their components as normal in the rows above the drawing header. The list shows all parts for all arrangements/variations of the assembly. Then, manually, they add a small 'seperate' table below this part list (in my screenshot, it is the 3 tall & narrow cells shown to the left of the drawing header) where they add the assembly numbers of the variants. Then, they add columns into the original parts list, and manually add in the quantities for the components particular to that assembly (in the case of this screenshot/assembly, one component is replaced by another, hence the minus signs that can be seen near the top of the table). I am not happy with this, as it is not associative.

So my question is, is it possible for me to modify the original parts list they have to include the assembly variants, and quantities for each of the assembly variants?

Any help would be most appreciated.

 

[cowski]

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[201181]

Hi,

Oops, didn't know that, thanks for letting me know

Hopefully this is better.