Design Representations

[emreywiley]

This will be my first post, so I will start with a hello and thanks to all for contributing.

The company I work for outsources the manufacture a small hydraulic brake cylinder, and has recently switched suppliers for a number of reasons. I am trying to use Inventor to keep track of the subtle differences between the "new" and "old" cylinder. Major differences are as follows:

Different rod seals (i.e. different parts depending on rev level)
Housing machined differently (i.e. revolve sketch changes based on rev level)
Additional bronze bushing in "new" cylinder.

I'm not familiar with the representations that are allowed in Inventor, and before I get too far down the wrong path, I was hoping to get some input as to the possible best approach to this "problem".

Ideally I would want to keep the data for each (new/old) cylinder in the same [.iam] file and have the drawing file show both representations.

 

[imcjoek]

Different rod seals (i.e. different parts depending on rev level)

Different parts require a replace via table, so your assembly must become an iAssembly. So you could have a "BrakeAssembly-1" and "BrakeAssembly-2".

Housing machined differently (i.e. revolve sketch changes based on rev level)

Strictly speaking, it's not good practice to do non-interchangable modifications via revision. Make them unique part numbers, or at least dashed part numbers.

Design representations are used more for positioning, or hiding components. IE: I want to show the range of motion of something, or I want to have a view in a drawing where a protective cover is not shown.