Catia part design table and products 4

[Korichnevijgigant]

Hello,

I am trying to put together a welded frame that uses many parts from a few structural sections, like a C channel, a square tube et cetera

I know Catia can do design tables and I have set up my parts with multiple lengths and part numbers in the design table

BUT, now how do I leverage this in the product?

if the generic instance of the Catpart is 50mm, and the length of the part I need from the design table is 150mm, how do I insert the 150mm instance instead of the 50mm?

Also if the 50mm part is already inserted, how do I change it to the 150mm?

Thanks and best regards

 

[jackk]

following

 

[Korichnevijgigant]

So it turns out, open the part tree and expand the feature that has the variable I want to modify (in my case the offset of a datum)

it will have a little graduation style hat (at least to my eyes)

if I double click this, I get a dialog box and if I click the design table icon there

so then I can select a configuration

BUT, that will cause all the other instances in the assembly to become that same configuration

 

[jasoncwells]

You need to create a catalog. The catalog will have the table driven parts. One of the columns of your design table needs to be "PartNumber". The rows will then (likely) be variations on length. Then you instantiate a specific part number from the catalog into your assembly. The user interface and terminology of catalogs is a bit hard to understand. Keep reading the docs as you work on this.

You should know that a catalog with all the structural shapes already exists. It's somewhat broken by default and has been for ten years. Once you make a couple fixes it works a treat.

BTW, I'll steer you down the garden path right now. Use this functionality along with published elements and layout models. By doing so you can create updateable, morphable steel structures that can be redesigned with a few mouse clicks. It's very powerful.

Regards,
Jason

 

[Korichnevijgigant]

Thanks jasoncwells

I actually have a column for PartNumber, Description

I will google how to create a catalog, hopefully I can find something, can you point me to where this info exists on the catiadoc site?

Thanks again