T&P Hoses P2 - Documenting Hose Lengths

How do I show hose lengths? How to document hoses? I need to document cut lengths, swage distance as well as overall lengths, so how to do that?

               

                Last week we covered BOM structure for hoses and I’ve showed you how to mark them as single items in BOM / Parts List. This is useful if you don’t’ manufacture the hose and you don’t need to show all the sub-parts individually.

                But what if you need to show those dimensions and send the drawing over to whoever is going to manufacture it; assuming it’s not a standard stock item.

                Hoses are created as a subassembly in tube and pipe and you get the route, the sweep part and the connectors (depending on style settings) in one single assembly.

Hoses are created as assemblies

                Unfortunately the info is not at the assembly level and it can’t be exposed when changing BOM structure to “Purchased” or “Inseparable” (check my previous post here). All the info is created in the hose part (the one containing the sweep).

                If you open the hose and check the parameters window you can find a couple of parameters defining the various lengths for the hose (they are exposed as custom iproperties as well.)

                If you open the parameters window here’s what you will find:

PL - Pipe Length (hose in this case)

RPL - I believe this is "Rounded Pipe Length" (hose in this case)

OPL - I believe this is "Overall Pipe Length" (hose in this case)

ROPL - I believe this is "Rounded Overall Pipe Length" (hose in this case)

Parameters exposed to iProperties.

If you have connectors each end (like I do) you will notice that the sweep sketch is made from a spline and 2 straight lines (swage distance). Measuring the spline and the individual lengths you will get PL(hose length) which is then rounded to the nearest increment (changeable from the T&P route style) and you then get RPL (rounded hose length).

Rounded increment is declared in the Route Style

OPL (overall hose length) you get by adding the connector lengths to the PL (hose length) and just like above when you round this to the nearest increment you get ROPL (rounded overall hose length).

                If you need this info in the Parts List you need to add these custom iproperties manually by editing the drawing table. However if you marked the hose as “Inseparable” or “Purchased” the info will not show up.

                In both cases you can add a Leader Line and use the “Custom Properties – Model” to show these on the drawing.

Use Leader Lines to document the various lengths

                Here's a short animation of the process.

Later,

ADS photo credit: Garden hose (license)