Extruded profiles best practices?

Are you going to be working with a value added re-seller or distributor?

Most companies don't work directly with 80/20. In our case we just send a STP file to our re-seller and then they create the BOM in their system using our profile types and lengths.

If you don't want to do that then you will need to create parameters which you can pull into your repeat region to create a BOM in the format you are looking for. You could do family tables, but since the cross section geometry is fixed and the only thing you can vary is the length its probably easier to create a template part and then just duplicate that part (save as) every time you want a new one.

I've done a lot of 80/20 stuff and with the profiles I've used a family table to define the lengths. I'll define the profile, and extrude it to a length. I rename the length to something like "length" or "lenBeam", etc. The family table lists all the lengths I want for each instance, determined by the needs of my assembly.

To define the text that appears in the bill of materials, let's call it "textBOM", I use relations to put the beam length into the description as follows:

textBOM = "80/20 BEAM, 4040 PROFILE, "
IF lenBeam < 1.000
 textBOM = textBOM + "0."
ELSE
 textBOM = textBOM + ITOS ( floor ( lenBeam ) ) + "."
ENDIF
textBOM = textBOM + EXTRACT ( ITOS ( 1000 * ( 1 + lenBeam - floor ( lenBeam ) ) ), 2, 3 )
textBOM = textBOM + " LONG"

This way when I slightly change the length of a beam as the design rambles along, its description is automatically updated. Plus, when you're estimating the cost of the structure, beams a priced on a per-unit-length basis so calculating a beam's cost is easy.

Take a look at the Advanced Framework Extension, or AFX.  A "lite" version is included with each license, although you need to set the config option "afx_enabled yes".  You also may need to re-run setup to install the database.

I believe that it has 80/20 profiles included and it will manage the various lengths and create a BOM and cut lengths automatically.  I've used it for  simpler, space frame type structures and have not used the BOM functionality, but it seems pretty slick.  There are a few tutorials available.

The "Lite" version is fully functional, but limited by how large an assy you can create.  20 profiles, I believe.  With some creativity, you can get around that by using smaller sub assys, etc.  If you're doing a lot, it's probably worth the extra license.

You can set parameters for Part # and Description to be flexible as well. Whit these parameters added to your repeat region they will show as different items.

We build our 80/20 parts in family tables so we know which length is its assigned part number. We also build the description from the parameters so we get the length in it.