Routing & Spool Piece Drawings

[SWKennedy]

Early in the beginnings of setting up our routing library our reseller suggested to take our flanges and create assemblies that included the flanges, gaskets, & fasteners so that when we put them in (and we use quite a bit of them) it was a simple drag and drop just like an elbow or reducer and all was good in the world.

Later we started to experiment with the spool piece drawing feature and found our mini-assemblies would not work because the spool piece feature doesn't recognize the flange assembly as being a stopping point. Our reseller suggested that we stop using the flange assemblies and put the components in one at time. Thus my question.

Does anyone know if it is possible to create some sort of fastener assembly using a mate reference that will work inside of a routing assembly? I have one created that I can take and drop over the hole of a gasket in a non-routing assembly and it works perfect and makes everything good in the world, but when I try to drop it in a routing assembly the mate reference doesn't get recognized.

 

[Updraft]

I don't understand why bringing the subassy in does not work for you, unless their is some requirement that the stopping parts be at the top level of the current assy. I still don't get that. However, if the parts simply need to be at the top level of the assembly instead of putting the parts in one at a time you could still bring them in as a subassembly and then dissolve the subassembly.

- - -Updraft

 

[SWKennedy]

I don't understand why it isn't working in a routing sub assembly either. Any other assembly, it works perfectly. I'm assuming that it has something to do with how solidworks treats routing assemblies, I just don't know how that is.

I have other options for putting the fasteners in, they just arn't as convenient as a drag and drop. One way, I can go into the routing subassembly, drop the fastener assembly in and carefully mate it but our systems typically have many flanged connections and having to use multiple mates on each one is cumbersome. If in the end it is what I have to do, but I thought I'd fish first.