Assembly Kits

[saspinall]

Hi all

So, we work on assemblies with say, maybe less than 100 parts. We have a project this year to "standardize" these assemblies and break them down into Kits. So instead of stipulating all the parts in the top level assy, you would stipulate 4 or 5 kits. These kits can then be modular..and making up another type of assembly might use Kit 1, Kit 2, Kit 4 and Kit 5....whereas another type of assembly might use Kit 1, Kit 3, Kit 4 and Kit 5. This is all well and good in the PDM world, where the PDM BOM is just a selection of a bag of part. What I am more interested is is how this translates in the CAD World, especially Creo 3.0, which we currently use.

Is it best using some form of Skeleton models to hand the kits off, with know axes, lengths etc instead on placing parts in space in the kit (assembly) models, so we would have a skeleton model of the top level assy, and hang the kit parts off that skeleton, then when assembling into the top level, using default constraints would place all 4 or 5 kits into the top level assembly and it would look like a fully assembled assembly.

Thanks in advance

Stu

[BenLoosli]

It would depend on what each kit contained and the relationship of the kit parts to the upper assembly.

A kit of head bolts with washers for an 4 cylinder engine might have them all aligned in their as-assembled location, but will this same kit work for another 4 cylinder engine that has different bore spacing? ANother option would be family table assemblies which could account for the some of the differences in your kitting. You may need to make your kits as bulk items to increase flexibility leaving 1 bolt set out to be physically shown in the model.

Maybe some more details on what types of components your kits would consist of and the final product, so we can have a better grasp on what the final design is.

[saspinall]

Thanks for the time to reply.  We work on electrical connectors, so the kits would be say for the ROV handle kit, a backshell kit, a receptacle/plug kit etc.....so we are modulising it so the customer would come along and say, we want an 8kV Receptacle, with ROV Handle, with 90 degree backshell, with a 5m hose.  We will have to look into what is in each kit, but, yes, I had already thought of the bulk item for each kit, so that the BOM on the top level assembly would just register the require kits.  Would be nice if the "kit" model had just all the components and they were allowed to be repositioned when brought into the next level assy.

Stu

[BenLoosli]

Since those kinds of components are well defined geometry wise, you should be able to build up kits and use interfaces that are common. Inheritance features may help on some of the component positioning.

You need to start with a common base component type and build up the final assembly around that. Then you can substitute various shells or whatever per your customer requirements. These could easily by brought into a drawing template with pre-defined views and a BOM to give the final assembly drawing.