There
is a lot of info on the internet on how to setup your template files and many of
you have already configured the drawing template, adding title blocks, borders
and some symbols maybe. You have probably edited the part template and changed the default material but chances are that you haven’t altered your assembly
template too much if at all.
I am
saying this because I see recurring questions popping out every
once in while by frustrated people doing repetitive tasks that could have been
avoided with a proper setup of their assembly template.
One of
the main things that will save a lot of frustration would be to setup a new
design view representation as default instead of the locked “Master”. God knows
how many times I’ve found Assemblies that cannot be saved because of the “Main
design view is locked” error.
TIP: Instead of locating
the template file and folder you can create a new file using New command and
then save those changes in the template using Inventor (big I top left) / Save
As / Save Copy As Template command.
So open
your standard.iam file template or fire up the new assembly command. Create a
new design view representation, I call mine “Default” and set is as active. This
will become the default view and hopefully if you don’t manually change it back
to Master you should get over that pesky error on editing locked design views.
The next
one up is BOM. By default the Structured tab is disabled and every time you
place a Parts List or edit the BOM you need to activate it. You then set it to All
Levels, you may change the default delimiter and most certainly you will add
and remove columns to suit your design needs.
So why don’t you go ahead and
make these changes persistent in the template?
Depending on your design process
and needs you might not use this but I recommend that you add Item QTY to your
BOM. This will report the cumulated number of instances in the BOM. The default
QTY will report the number of items as long as the item doesn’t have a length (G_L
parameter) like structural sections, pipes, etc. in which case it will report
cumulated length and not the number of items in the assembly.
I feel
better already, anything else?
I use a
lot of Content Center and Purchase Parts that are library read-only items and
when doing large assemblies it’s hard to navigate the browser to find that part
you want to edit. So what I like to do is add two folders called CC (Content
Center) and PP (Purchased Parts) where I group the files to clean up the
browser keeping just the normal parts. It makes a huge difference to be
able to find something fast not to hunt and pick all the time. Also, you can
now suppress hide or disable a whole folder at a time ;)
Nice...
what else?
How
about adding some virtual parts? This is where you get creative and to utilise
the tip above you might want to add them to a folder called Virtual. It’s
better to add as much you can think off and then delete them in the assembly
later if not used. Creative? Like what? Stuff like oil, grease, man hour costs,
machining costs, shipment, painting, etc. Remember that you have Estimated Cost
on iproperties and virtual parts although exist in the assembly only they do
have iproperties just like any other parts. You can even add a long descriptive
text in the comments field. Do you need to add the Estimated Cost to BOM? How
about Comments then?
Keep
going please!
Anything you need changing in the Document
Settings? Maybe you want to change the default Lightning Style, maybe not but
you might want to change the default dimension display to “Display as
expression” to see the full equation driving that dimension. In here you can
change the units as well as modelling precision. Verify all the tabs and make
sure there’s nothing else that needs changing.
Is this
it?
On the
short list you might also consider:
·
Deactivating the Contact Solver in Inspect Tab
·
Parameters that you keep adding all the
time like bounding box dimensions.
·
Link or embed some excel files
·
Add various iLogic Forms if needed
·
Add some iLogic code like one to prompt you to
fill in iProperties at first save.
·
Turn on Center of Gravity
·
Etc.
I suggest that every time you find yourself changing settings in an assembly pause and think if this is something that might
be saved in the template. If you do this for a week then you’ve probably got
most of things but it’s a good exercise to do every once in a while especially
with each new Inventor release.
Later,
ADS.
