Building Assembly From Excel

[OV_10001888]

one of my tasks is to build assemblies of various customer orders. we have a big folder with many subassemblies in and I am given a list in excel of which sub-assemblies are needed for the specific order, at the moment I am going through and manually assembling each one into the main assembly. so I was wondering if anyone knew if it was possible to have creo automatically do it, taking the list from excel. any help would be much appreciated.  

[KenFarley]

The trouble with something like this is making an assembly isn't just knowing what files are needed. The components need to be geometrically placed into the assembly. For example, if there are four of a particular component needed, somehow there has to be a way to specify where in space those four things go. I don't know how one would go about defining things in an Excel file in order to properly assemble components with the correct mating/alignment constraints, offsets, etc.

[tbraxton]

It is possible to do it. I have seen some pretty sophisticated configuration management done using Excel files as inputs to Creo assemblies. I think it is usually leveraged along with Pro/Program. It is not something I have ever implemented but I have seen it used by organizations. In the Pro/E era the AE example was for an elevator configuration manager where you would specify options and the number of floors in the installation for an elevator and the assembly and fab drawings would update based on the Excel file.

[Patriot_1776]

A friend from way back in the day specialized in doing this.  His name is JD Felkins.  He works here now, I'd give JD a call/e-mail.  Tell him Frank from way back in the Marconi days sent you.

Design 2 Solutions: Contact Us

Best of luck!

[TomU]

Is Felco Solutions still around or did JD close that up when he started working for Design 2?

P.S.  Might want to talk to someone about updating the Design 2 website.  Says it hasn't been updated since 2005 and I'm pretty sure no one is selling "Pro/Engineer" anymore.  🙂

[Patriot_1776]

'Afternoon Tom!  Not sure actually, I haven't talked to JD for many years.  I worked with him at Marconi in...the late '90's I think it was, then accidently ran across him at a PTC event in (Orlando?) FL in maybe '05-'06 and had a beer or 2 with him.  Then I stumbled across him online from a link here I think it was.  I figure if the OP wanted to they could chase him down wherever he is now, I'm sure he's doing something similar....somewhere.  That was just the first link I found, didn't have time to do a deep dive.

To me, it will ALWAYS be Pro/ENGINEER!  🙂

[TomU]

Sorry, I thought when you said "He works here now", you meant with you, at wherever you work.  To the best of my knowledge, this is JD's current home: https://www.felcosolutions.com/

[Patriot_1776]

Sorry, I thought this place was AFTER felcosolutions, not before.  I'd forgotten about that.  Sorry for the confusion.  My initial search didn't come up with that.

Well, if you can find him, he's probably a good person to talk to!  LOL

[Trebla]

Hi @Patriot_1776 and  @TomU 

I think you are talking about this person:

@jfelkins 

He is in this Community, you could see a picture of him.

[Patriot_1776]

Yup, that's JD.  I didn't know he was a member here, but it looks like he's not been active for a long time, so, it might not be possible to contact him here, but the OP can certainly try.

[TomU]

SmartAssembly exists for this.  You could also take a look at NitroCell if you don't want to do any programming.

[DavidBigelow]

Thanks for the mention - on Nitro-CELL!

The FREE license of Nitro-CELL enables someone to get their head around the process easy enough.  Coordinate Systems are the key do doing this well.  (well defined interfaces using skeletons or part CSYS names are always a good thing no matter what tool you are using).

ALSO - If you want to code a bit... CREOSON is FREE and enables you to use Python or Javascript to do some pretty amazing things with Assembly Operations.

The nice thing about putting things together with Excel using Nitro-CELL - you can use Excel Tables to structure and manipulate things using PowerQuery.

Dave

[KE_2142943]

I don't know if this is something our Creo guys came up with or if this is a standard Creoson tool but we use something called Auto Assembler. It's exactly what you're talking about.