This thread brings up a good point. My company also uses family tables to create flat patterns, we add those instances to our drawings and filter out the flat instances in the related tables shown in the drawing.
What are the pros/cons of using a simplified representation instead of the family table method? I can see immediately you can cut the number of instances in half since you don't have to deal with the flat states. Also, you don't have to filter the flat states out of the family table. From a memory perspective, it is nice you only have half of the files to have to store. The only "issue" I'd have is that in our sheet metal models we like to leave the part in its formed state. This means suppressing the flat pattern. I'm not sure if there is an easy way to leave it like this and use the simplified representations with adding in extra bend all/unbend all to create the same final affect. The down side of using those features instead of the flat pattern feature is that it does not stay at the bottom of the model tree.
What is everyone else's opinion?
