This document will out line the steps and procedures involved using Inventor to create Assemblies, Weldments, individual Parts, and Drawings. In order to outline the specific step to be taken, an understanding of what the conclusion of a project developed, and drawn in Inventor is to be. This outline will describe in detail the goal of creating Assembly drawings with a Parts List, Detail drawings which could include Weldments and individual parts shown on the same sheet, all of which will be listed in a "single" Bill of Material (BOM). It is key to understand that the goal of this procedure is to develop a set of detail drawings that could include both weldments assemblies and individual parts all on a single drawing sheet, and have all parts listed in a "single" BOM. The Bill of Material inside the top level Assembly, where all the parts are brought together to complete the design, controls almost everything that is displayed on the drawings. The Parts List will show on Assembly drawings a descriptive name of the part, the Item number, Quantity of parts required for the Assembly, and what detail sheet that part can be found on. The detail sheet will show in the Bill of Material the material type or description and/or part number of purchased parts, Length, Width, and Thickness, and the quantity of parts need to be fabricated. In the case of weldments, the total number of weldments required in the top level assembly will be listed, however the number of sub-parts listed will be in quantities required to build one weldment. The fabricator needs to be aware of this fact when ordering material. This procedure will cover major steps and reasoning behind why Parts, Weldments, Assemblies have to be arranged in this manner, and not click-by-click instructions. This procedure is intended to advise operators who have some working knowledge of Inventor, and are capable of navigating to the different windows in Inventor without complete instructions. Also on design note, only reuse Parts in a weldment if they will be used in an identical Weldment assembly (mirror). If the same part will work in two different assemblies, copy the part and create a new part file for each assembly that part will be used in. This creates more parts, but due to the way parts are handled in BOM's it is necessary. Individual parts: Part Selection: New parts are to be started from the "Parts Template" tab. Some Parts have been pre-formatted for shape, material, and unit of measure. If you parts is of irregular shape choose "Standard" Be sure to include in irregular shape Parts the parameters below describing the overall Length, Width and Thickness. Part Size: Select fx Parameters button. Change Parameter values in Equation column to the size Parts your design requires. o G_T = Thickness o G_W = Width o G_L = Length Leave Parameter Name's as shown, and leave Export Parameter check boxes checked.
Part Description - iproperties: Most of these properties will be filled out once the design and modeling are complete and the parts have been placed into an Assembly. However in this section I will describe what each parameter is used for. Select iproperties. Select "Custom" tab. o DRAWING NO.: The sheet number that this part will be detailed on. Not every part will be detailed. This value can be filled out from the Assembly BOM once sheet numbers has been assigned. o G_L = Length : Part Length. This parameter is auto-filled from the fx Parameters window. Do not change value from this location. o G_W = Width: Part Width. This parameter is auto-filled from the fx Parameters window. Do not change value from this location. o G_T = Thickness: Part Thickness. This parameter is auto-filled from the fx Parameters window. Do not change value from this location. o stock description = material description: This parameter describes the generic material description such as: FLAT BAR, ROUND BAR, CHANNEL C8 x 11.5, etc. Select iproperties. Select "Project" tab. o Part Number: This is typically the File name of the part. Inventor uses this parameter to create a new line item in an assembly. Alike Part Numbers, in an assembly, will be combined and the quantity count will be increased by the number of occurances. o Stock Number: This parameter will be used as an identical column to Item in an Assembly and Weldment. This will be further explained in the Assembly and Weldment section. Do NOT fill anything in this parameter at this time. o Description: This parameter will describe a parts function inside an assembly (i.e. Bearing Plate, Jack Shaft) o The rest of the parameters can be filled out as desired.
Weldments: Create weldments as required using Content Center, created parts, etc. Try to limit fasteners (nuts, bolts) as these are some what difficult to deal with inside of a weldment. Editing the Bill of Materials with the proper columns and formatting is very important to the whole process of detailing parts. Bill of Materials: Click "Bill of Materials" button. RMB (right mouse button) "Structured" tab and Disable. RMB "Parts Only" tab and Enable. Click the magnifying glass on upper BOM tool bar, and select View Properties. Set Parts Only Properties to Numbering/Alpha, and Case/Lower. (PCI Weldment Templates have already been set to this configuration). Structure BOM columns as shown below. Drag columns (left or right) as need to create order shown. Fill out "stock description", "Description", "Material" and "DRAWING NO." columns as needed. (See screen shot below for examples). Place "Stock Number" column next to "Item" column. Once all BOM items have been arranged in desired order, re-number items in lower case letters, skipping appropriate letters (i, l, o,). Duplicate letters in "Stock Number" column. This step is needed when editing the BOM in the top level assembly, and when placing individual parts on Detail sheet the Item No. will be automatically displayed. See Drawings section of this document.
Assemblies: Create Assemblies as required using weldments, parts, Content Center parts, etc. Include fasteners as required. Remember the top level Assembly Bill of Materials is used to display all the information shown on drawings both Assembly and Detail drawings. The proper columns and formatting is very important to the whole process of detailing parts. Bill of Materials: Click "Bill of Materials" button. RMB "Parts Only" tab and Disable. RMB "Structured" tab and Enable. (if not already done) Click the magnifying glass on upper BOM tool bar, and select View Properties Set Structured Properties to Level/All Levels, Delimiter (decimal point). (PCI Assembly Templates have already been set to this configuration). Structure BOM as shown below. Drag columns (left or right) as need to create column order shown. Place "Stock Number" column next to "Item" column. Once all BOM Items have been arranged in desired order, re-number Items. Duplicate numerical order in all top level parts/weldments in the "Stock Number" column all the way down to the start of Content Center Items. (shown in BOM screen shot upper right) Expand weldment nodes and reorder weldment items per "Stock Number" alphabetical order (drag parts up or down as needed shown in BOM screen shot lower left) Duplicate letters from "Stock Number" column in "Item" column. (Yellow highlighted Item numbers just means there are duplicate Item numbers. This is to be expected and should not cause issues. Fill out "stock description" and "Description" columns as needed top level component. (see screen shot for examples). Duplicate top level Description in "stock description" column. "stock description" column is used on Detail drawings to fill out the "Description" column in the BOM displayed on Detail sheets.
Drawings: All of the preparations in the Parts, Weldments, and Assemblies leads up to the final product, Assembly and Detail drawings. This section is divided into two sections Assembly drawings and Detail drawings. PCI title block templates have been preconfigured as outlined below. However this document does cover some of the formatting and Styles setup as a way of documenting and explaining the requirements needed so that this method of drawing development can me duplicated across multiple clients. Two Standards have been developed, PCI Assembly Standard & PCI Detail Standard, both of which are almost identical. The only differences are View Labels, and which Parts List is set as default. New standards for each client can be developed from these two standards. Assembly Drawings: Two drawing template have been created. They are fairly self expletory. Inside of the Assembly Sheet Template, the PCI Assembly Standard has been set current. The Assembly Parts List has been set as shown in the Styles screen shot. See Default Column Settings. Assembly Drawings - Placing Views: Place view as normal. Select the Assembly to be shown on drawings Under Representation/View, select Master. Set Positions & Level of Detail as required. Click the light bulb (lower left corner), set scale and type in View Identifier phrase. After views are placed select Parts List from the Annotate tab, select the base view and place Parts List in upper right corner of border. Given the Style setup shown the Parts List below is the result.
Detail Drawings BOM Setup: Two drawing template have been created. They are fairly self expletory. Inside of the Detail Sheet Template, the PCI Detail Standard has been set current. The Detail Bill of Material has been set as shown in the Styles screen shot. The entire list of columns for the Detail Bill of Material style has been shown below. Detail Drawings View Setup: Expand "Standard" (left panel) Select "View Preferences" tab (right panel) View Type - select "Base" Click the Pencil icon Now in the Format Text window, under the Type drop down, select "Properties - Model. In the "Properties" drop down, select "Description". Now click the button to add this parameter to the View Display. Do the same as above and add the "Stock Number" parameter next the "Item No." Format text for font and size if desired. By adding these fields to the Base view description, the View name and the Item number for the individual part will be automatically filled out, because the information is already in the BOM, and this bit of programming just access it. If the Item number or Description should ever need to change in the Assembly file BOM, these values in the View on the drawing would automatically change.
Detail Drawings - Placing Views: Place view as normal. Select the Weldment, or Part to be shown on drawing. Under Representation/View, select Master. (for weldment only) Set Level of Detail as required. (for weldment only) Click the light bulb (lower left corner), set scale, do not type anything in View Identifier box. Given the View Style setup, the picture below is the result. The view description and Item No. fields are automatically fill out from the BOM Inventor Modeling Procedure Detail Drawings - Placing Views: Place view as normal. Select the Weldment, or Part to be shown on drawing. On a drawing sheet, select "Parts List" from the "Annotate" tab. Now in the Parts List window click the button Browse and select the top level assembly that contains all parts and weldments. Click OK and place the BOM in the upper right corner of the border. If the Parts List (as seen under the Assembly Drawings - Placing Views: of this document) is placed, on the Annotate tab/format panel, in the bottom drop down menu, select PCI Detail Bill of Material. Now RMB on the BOM and select Edit, highlight the rows that are not to be seen, RMB on one of the selected rows and select Visibility. Rows can be added between Items to create space between weldments and parts, and individual cells can also be overridden. Given the View Style setup, the BOM shown is the result.