Family table instance drawings

[ahill-2]

I''m pretty new to family tables, been reading up/ clicking around with it for the last week.

We produce frames for crawler tracks. Each of our frames fits into one of 8 types of track, there will then be 6-10 different sizes of that track, and each frame has around 40 components. Half of these components are common and are set as library parts. Half of them will change height/ width on most frames in that design to match the size changes and are saved as their own unique component.

So every non-library component for every frame is it's own unique part with it's own unique file. Despite them only having 1-2 dimensions changing. A change to one of these components will often be copied across all similar components for each size track in that type, and this is not a quick thing to do. I believe this is the kind of thing that can be made significantly easier to manage using family tables.

I've worked out how to do the components as their own family tables. And pull them in to another family table driven assembly for each size of frame.

I can then produce the Generic drawing for each component and another generic one for the assembly. And from those save instance drawings using replace+save as for each frame, every drawing will come through fully detailed except for anything that is 'unique' to that frame, dimensions in the drawings will auto update if I change them in the table, life is good.

The problem comes with needing to change anything non-dimensional. i.e weld sizes. Having produced the drawings for every instance if I then change one of the weld sizes in the generic, it doesn't pull through.

It also falls down with any new features, for example if I add a chamfer to the generic, it will show up in every instanced drawing, but requires detailing in each one individually; or I could add the detail to the generic, and redo all the 'save as', but this would overwrite any of the detail that is actually unique to each instance. I tried adding the dimensions for the new features directly in to the model, but this still requires I go in to each drawing and use show model annotations before it will appear.

Is this within the functionality of family tables? I'd read that they're really only meant to be used for producing the generic model+drawing for stuff like bolts, and thinking I might be biting off more than I can chew trying to get them to control 90% of the assembly drawing.

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[Kevin · Accepted solution]

For your weld sizes how are you setting up your model to give the specified information? I would think you should be able to get those to display correctly. Adding new features to a model using a family doesn't mean those features will automatically show the dimensions or have dimensions applied to them, it works the same as if you were adding a new feature to a model that doesn't use a family table. What happens when you replace a model with another is it will display the values for the dimensions shown that are common between the models. If a dimension is shown and the instance has a different value for the dimension, when you use replace the dimension should update accordingly. If the dimension isn't used by the replace model, the feature is suppressed, the dimension will be suppressed in the view annotations. If you were to replace that model with another that uses those dimensions they will show because they were shown initially. If you don't show a dimension for a feature or add a feature later, the dimensions don't automatically show if you are updating the model or are using use replace. To do what you want you have to know what that 90% is and that it's not changing and detail it on your initial drawing before using replace and save-as to create new drawings otherwise you will need to go into each and update as needed. There isn't a link between drawings.

[ahill-2]

Weld sizes shown in a symbol.

"There isn't a link between drawings."

I think that sums it up, everything works 'correctly' first time through or if I re-save things from the generic drawing. But I was hoping there was a way to update the generic and have instance drawings A,B,C etc. automatically update, but from what you're saying that is not how it works. Cheers for the help.