Boy did I open another can of worms. Just kidding.
All the responses where great but there is no true answer. I guess it
comes downs to what type of products you build, User knowledge and
Standards on how they are implemented.
Generally from what I got was that and this is by no means across the
board is that engineers/designers love them and administrators don't.
I myself think there is a risk involved using them if you users are not
trained properly and standards are not in place and followed to the "T".
Like I mentioned we build 1 of a kind prototypes and the use of family
tables would be limited to Sheetmetal parts and Castings.
Standard hardware is another issue I don't see the need to have them in a
family table just so I can automatically replace them in an assembly, it
doesn't happen that often here.
I know people will say but if you need to make a change to all of them
it's easier but how often does a 6-32 screw change. My opinion is that
it's easy for the users to deal with
a single part and a hellava lot easy to administrate.
When it comes to assembly family tables they can become a nightmare
depending on the complexity. So where do you draw the line (5, 10, 50
column's/Row's). Once again I think it comes down
to training and standards.
Keep in mind that when we started with Intralink it was version 3.0 and
everyone knows the problems family tables caused. This is why I had a
standard that no family tables where to be
made. I know there was improvements when we switched to 3.2 Intralink but
I did not see the need to change the standard. Also we are in the process
of trying to integrate our MRP system
with Intralink as far as BOM's are concerned.
I have an image of what started all the problems here. Just reply and I'll
send it to you for your review.
What kills me is that this user knows how to use family tables right, he
knows he could have name the instances right and applied the description
parameter to the family table etc.
Hopefully some of you will fell my pain. Once again I would like to thank
everyone for there input.
Thanks, and have a great weekend.
Michael C. Andreen
CAD/CAM/PDM Administrator
L-3 Communications Brashear
