Standard drawing for parametric part???

[Michel Gendron]

Here the deal. When you have a standard assembly where only few dimensions change (2 or 3), let's say a thread playing in this range: 3mm ,6mm ,12mm or 1/8"UNC,1/4"UNC and 1/2"UNC.

A) How do you show this in annotation?
B) How do you manage the link 2D/3D when you have to change some dimensions?
C) How do you manage those 3D parts when you can have 2 different kind of part in the same assembly ?!?

I've got some idea, but I'm not sure which one is the best one.

1) You create each part manually and one drawing for each? (pratically impossible to manage!)
2) You create a drawing only for one of those and edit the dimension to put a "thread size" as variable. Then each 3D part must have a ID number that will match to something in the table...(How to manage the table)
3) Any other ideas?

That exemple can be apply to any standard part that must be in 3D librairy, but they aren't.

Let assume now that the only thing that change is the material of a bushing in 4 different journal... This is a small exemple, but cause me a lot of time lost in updating 2D!

Send me you idea on that one and we may create a pool to vote on that question.

[May Kung]

We do a hybrid of sorts. Technically, it's a bit of a cheat, since we tend to reuse older screw drawings from before we used 3D models.

In Work Manager, we create a part folder with the base number of the screw. For us, different dashes denote the different lengths. We create and save all the different models we might use here.

For the really old screw drawings, we have a generic print that has no 3D associativity. We use a table to indicate what length each dash represents.

For the not-so-old screw drawings, there is an actual 2D print attached in Annotation, defining all the common dimensions (head size, bit recess size, material type, etc.). The length does not have a dimension attached. Instead, we use Create Leader and "draw" in arrows and label it "L," then refer to the table for the correct length.

One option in your case is to create a dummy assembly that "owns" all the different options. Create one viewset (and one drawing) for this assembly. In the views in the drawing, selectively Add or Remove the pertinent part. This way, you maintain 3D/2D associativity without having to do multiple 2D drawings. I have to do this frequently with some of my parts.