Global working architecture and link between elements

[RJ_FR]

Hello,

Today i have a question about global structure and interractions between parts, assembly, bill of materials etc.

Here is a view of my architecture :

For creating new products, i design parts. These are assembled in assembly and for the master assembly i edit a bill of material with a repeat region in a table. Export in .csv, sort in Excel for buying standart parts, supply raw material, manufacture parts, send to subcontractor for some etc.

For parts which i manufacture, i create a manufacturing assembly with a raw part. I create the machining program and a drawing for our machine shop.

Now the questions :

To manage the supplies i use my master bill of material (parts and components are sorted with parameters in the repeat region). but for the part i machine, i don't need the part itself but the raw part corresponding to this part. My problem, there is no link between these two. Currently I make the link manually but it's tedious when you have around thirty parts to manufacture in the assembly

My raw parts are in 90% of case a parallelepiped. I have a template part which i use every time i need to create a raw part with 3 parameters R1, R2 and R3 attached to the 3 dimensions of the parallelepiped : length width and height.

I would like to have a link or something else for displaying it i my bill of material.

Should I use the parameters : add 3 relations in my part for example : Raw1 = parameter R1 of the orresponding raw part (link between parts) ?

Should I use the inheritance functions ?

Other ideas ?

Thanks in advance.

[tbraxton]

Thanks for including the intent map of your design in the post. It is very helpful to have this available.

To specifically address the use of the raw part to drive the part.prt, what is the difference between the raw and finished parts? I assume that the part is machined (material removed) to create the finished part based on your post. If that is the case, then I would use an inheritance feature from the raw part to the as machined part. This is one of the intended applications for inheritance features and works well. You should be able to use the parameters of R1...R3 in the part.prt if needed as they can be passed through the inheritance feature.

One thing to consider is that your template will be a parent to all finished parts that reference it through inheritance features so if you make a change to the template then all of the dependent parts are subject to modification as a result of such a change. There are ways around this if it is a problem. The easiest way is to just save a copy of the template part with a unique name and use that to drive the finished part.

Refer to the zip file I posted in this thread for examples of how to access parameters in inheritance features.

Solved: Inherited models with vardim dimensions - PTC Community

[kdirth]

I agree that the inheritance function may be the best option for your process. 

There are several different ways to go about this depending on your needs:

1. Create the raw part/assembly with finishing cuts at the end and suppressed.  The finished part inherits the raw part, and the finishing cuts are resumed.  This works well for machined castings when there are limited variations in the final parts.
2. Create the raw part/assembly.  The finished part inherits the raw part, and you make the finishing cuts.
3. Create the raw part/assembly with all of the various possible variations at the end and suppressed.  The finished part inherits the raw part and only the desired variations are resumed.  I use this often for molded parts where a single mold is used to create a family of parts using inserts.

[vnamboodheri]

Hello @RJ_FR, 

It looks like you have some responses from some community members. If any of these replies helped you solve your question please mark the appropriate reply as the Accepted Solution. 

Of course, if you have more to share on your issue, please let the Community know so other community members can continue to help you.

Thanks,
Vivek N.
Community Moderation Team.