Solid Edge Families??

[pramos]

I am very new to Solid Edge and I'm currently using version 12.

I work as a mechanical designer and have been assigned to model all the hydraulic cylinders we currently manufacture, which is about 1000. The thing is that alot of these cylinders are the same except for rod size, piston and packing. The feature that is normally different is the barrel length and rod length.

Being that I am so new with SE and really have no idea how to get started I would be curious to hear from anyone else if the family feature would be the way to handle this. If so I would appreciate any input on how to get started and if not any info would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ckatz]

Family of Assembly is good for a small assembly <15 parts, and when you only have 4 or 5 family members. Once you get up past that, no mater how fast your computer is you start having major saving issues. Also if you are going to use FOA, make sure you have update five installed, it fixes a problem with opening the files.