"Installation" type drawings

[ShaggyPE]

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.

-Shaggy

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Have one top level assy with the structure created as a layout or skeleton sketch. All the components can then be set into the structure, and Configurations or Display States created for each sub-assy drawing required.

 

[ShaggyPE]

Thanks CBL,
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

 

[ctopher]

Another suggestion: Have subassy's all they up to a final assy, then the installation dwg. You can use the subassy's as your details.

Chris
SolidWorks 07 4.0/PDMWorks 07
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[CorBlimeyLimey]

Shaggy ... Why is that a problem?

 

[ShaggyPE]

CBL,
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

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

One way of using the Layout or Skeleton is as a master part inserted into the TL assy. If you were to do that, the same master part could be used by everyone in your multi-user environment, but within their own sub-assy portion.

http://www.solidworks.com/swexpress/sept02/200209_techtip_03.cfm

Goals for Assembly Management
The goals of using the techniques described within this article are as follows:

* Collaboration (internal, external, data sources and types). Ability to break up the assembly into subassemblies so multiple designers and external suppliers or contractors can work on the same project
* Ability to easily define and document the design intent of the assembly
* Ability to analyze assembly fit, form, and function
* Ease of modification
* Ability to simulate assembly movement. This allows for the analysis of assembly motion and range of motion in a virtual prototype.
* Optimize the performance of large assemblies
* Control access to the design intent within a collaborative assembly

 

[ShaggyPE]

same master part could be used by everyone in your multi-user environment, but within their own sub-assy portion

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

 

[Sp1n]

The skeleton suggestion is a good one. Take it a step further. You do not need to create a skeleton 'part'. You can create an assembly level sketch that is not a part. We've done this quite a bit for structural (weldments) since those types of files are sketch driven anyway.

 

[ShaggyPE]

problem is I need the structure part in phantom when I create the "installation drawing". I don't need the skeleton for any top down design.

-Shaggy

 

[Sp1n]

you probably know this, but you can change the line font per component.

 

[ShaggyPE]

What I meant by needing the "structure part in phantom" was that the structure part needed to be in the assembly. I can't use a skeleton sketch to represent the structure.

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