Automatic creation of drawings when using part family in Teamcenter

[asdfhyhjgj]

First of all, thanks for a great forum! I had a look at some older threads concerning this problem, but I couldn’t find any information on how to do this in Teamcenter.

I'm trying to figure out how to automate the creation of drawings when making part families in Teamcenter. I'm using NX6 and Teamcenter 2007. The company uses the master model approach.

The company has a lot of products with very similar designs, for example there is a cone which comes in more then 30 versions.

I've figured out how to create family members for each one of the design, but no drawing is created.

Once a new part and a drawing has been created for each version of this cone, is it then possible to export the new parts out from the part family, thus creating independent parts? One approach is to use 'save as', but this can also be quite time consuming if a design has a large number of versions.

Any suggestions?

Regard,
Andreas

 

[Buckshott00]

Hello, We had a similar situation at our company. This link should help, there are probably 2 or 3 other good threads on here.

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=285120&page=1

But this will probably be the most useful to you:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=239367&page=76

 

[asdfhyhjgj]

Thanks for your reply Buckshott00.

I've had a look at the older threads but I can't find a solution to my problem. All solutions given there require some manual work.

I've done some tests myself. If I create my drawing in the same file as the model template a drawing will automatically be created for each family member. Since changes cannot be made to family members I need to do a 'save as' to be able to make changes in the drawing. For example I might need to move some dimensions to make a proper drawing. Though, using save as to make a separate item of each family member is no real problem, this is exactly what we want at the company. We want to use part family to generate the geometry and the drawing, and then make separate items of each family member. This could be a good approach if there is a way to make a UGPART of the drawing that is saved inside the UGMASTER. Does anyone know if it is possible to “extract” a drawing from the UGMASTER and save it as a UGPART?

Any other suggestions?

Regards,
Andreas

 

[Buckshott00]

What you're describing is the master model approach.

You have to play with your Master Drawing file but once it is setup correctly, it will update for you automatically. That being said almost every drawing will need some manipulating, unless you have exactly the same geometry for every part, but with different sizes.

Go into your part family and make a couple of parts. Now go into your master drawing file and reference your first new part for your view creation. Add whatever dimensions you want. Now save as XXX. Now right click on the part and change the reference set. You should be able to select from the part family members you created. Now if you want to change them go into your array(excel sheet) and change the values you want, update the family member and update the drawing view.

Also, try using the visual editor so you can use the feature parameters function to auto dimension your stuff

 

[asdfhyhjgj]

I've tried your approach, and a couple of other approaches aswell. I've shown some them to the responsible personel, but they haven't decided on which we should use yet. There are some other factors that need to be taken into acount because of the external document system that is beeing used together with Teamcenter. I'll give you a follow up when it's decided. Thanks!

Regards,
Andreas