In the ANSI Inch section you can get the 7/16-20 x 1.25 hex socket set screw with whatever standad point you want. This gets you the representative geometry and general description of the part. If you want to edit the actual part's properties you can then change its material properties and description.
If you need to do this for many parts then it would make sense to edit the Toolbox (configure the TB) and make these changes all at once.
The specific set screw callout you asked for is not the default.
Thanks.
I've created my own. I want to make several different lengths head height configurations. I change the length and the cut thread stays the same so interfering with the head on shorter bolts..
How can I configure the helix height?
Toolbox does not have a helical feature for the threads, rather it provides several choices to represent the threads. It is rare that you actually need to model threads with a helix - too much unnecessary detail and helical features are computationally intensive.
Toolbox is highly customizable. Read up on it and you'll be impressed. We read the TB Help and it lead us to do the following:
1. Copy the TB to create a customizable file.
2. We created (Company name)-inch and (Company name)-metric from the ANSI standards.
3. We exported our list of fasteners from our ERP system into a spreadsheet, mostly to get the part numbers and descriptions for cut and paste into Toolbox.
4. We customized our versions of the standard to just show our parts and their descriptions. Now when we go to insert a fastener the user only sees what we have in our system. If we need to add a new fastener that is easily done, and we are keeping the SWX Toolbox synchronized with our ERP system.
5. Yes, you can completely control the length of threads on a fastener - there is a field for that. There are also fields for the other dimensions controlling head height, diameter, etc. We have a few low head height SHCS.
6. This works for all the different fastener/hardware types. We found that some of our washers had different dimensions from the Toolbox so we changed the dimensions in Toolbox to represent our actual parts. This went very quickly since the TB fields are shown in a table similar to a spreadsheet and we were able to change all the affected parts at one time.
7. Most of our fasteners are stainless. Yes, TB allows you to easily set/change the material.
Though Design Tables are nice, we also found that TB gave us much more control and made for more efficient files that the DT-configured parts. For instance, with a DT-configured part if you have 100 configs that part file gets to be big and the use of that file can cause SWX to be sluggish. Toolbox can be configured to make each part configuration an individual part file. We have been using it this way and have noticed faster loads versus the many-configured part files.
Many people look at the up-front work to setup Toolbox this way and decide instead to go the manual route of making their own fastener part files. They don't realize that this up-front work pays for itself very, very quickly. We now have a uniform standard that is easy to use so everyone's fasteners references the same parts AND we have no problem finding the Toolbox fasteners. I'll bet that my guys here do not even know where the TB parts are (because they don't care since it works so well for them!).
Something we had not counted on was that when we go to select a fastener in Toolbox we have the option to list by Description or by Part Number. That is a really nice touch!
It is also a breeze to change a part. If we used an M8x20 SHCS and later realize we need to change the length to 30mm we simply pick the part then RMB to select Change Toolbox Configuration. We can then select the M8x30 from TB and it updates the geometry, part number, description, BOM, etc.
Give Toolbox a good investigation and see how you can leverage it to your maximum benefit.
Thank you, Updraft, for that. I have a question about that process though. At the end of our project, we have to provide all of our assembly files to our customer in a specific file structure. We set up a TB on our shared server so that we can all access the same hardware, but our customer doesn't have access to our server or our shared TB. We are required to simply provide them all of the assemblies and parts copied directly from our file structure. Since they don't share the same TB database, will there be complications when it goes to reference TB parts that are standard but possibly dont have our specific configurations yet created, or is there a good chance that those parts will be corrupted in the assembly files? Would it be better then that we save all of the hardware out individualy, or can we still somehow utilize the TB and all of its glory?
