Splitting items in repeat region question

We have assemblies where the same part (M10 flat washer, for example)
appears in more than one location.

When making the assembly drawing by default they all lump together. I
would like to split a quantity in the BOM and also provide a different
fixed index (balloon number) for each group.

I tried looking in the help and came up short. I will be happy to
hear from the group if this is possible and how. Wildfire4.

David

 

We have assemblies where the same part (M10 flat washer, for example)

I think it is not possible with "fix index.
I do it but I had customized the repeat region table and the baloon with
thic parameter
&asm.mbr.cparam.POSITION
In this way you need add manually each index (position) but the same item
can have different index

Regards.
Marco

 

Hi David,
in your "Table Region" menu you must select "duplicates" this will
allow mulitple quantities. you probably have it set for "no
duplicates" if your unable to get to this menu.
i would suggest you add a balloon by the new fastener by
"comp" (component)
-Lou

 

Hi David,
in your "Table Region" menu you must select "duplicates" this will
allow mulitple quantities. you probably have it set for "no
duplicates" if your unable to get to this menu.
i would suggest you add a balloon by the new fastener by
"comp" (component)
-Lou
The advice to set the Dups attribute is correct but needs a caution. Doing this is pervasive throughout the current assembly level (i.e. it doesn't spread into sub assemblies). But it can instantly increase the number of BOM items from a few dozen to hundreds or thousands. So your BOM item 5 which lists 50 in the summarized, "no dups" form, will now have 50 BOM items, and so on through the entire list. This applies also to BOM balloons. Each item instance, whether visible or not will get a balloon 'attached' to it. And true to your wishes, each will have the BOM's Find number. But there'll be 50 of them to deal with and that "no dups" quantity for each summarized item.

You could do what you're looking for, without the individual Find numbers, by simply doing Create Balloon, picking another instance of the part, then selecting the quantity to assign. You can do this as many times as you wish, on views on any sheet, until you exhaust the total or you don't have a balloon readily available to borrow from. Getting balloons from one view to another or from one sheet to another can get pretty tricky but that's another story.

David Janes

 

One of my guys gave this whole issue the "good ol college try" with a
small assembly drawing. In the end it sucked because we couldn't
quite all of the functionality that we needed.

I may get initiated one of these days and submit a couple of
enhancement requests.

David

 

Marco,

PTC recommended the same method.

I've tried it and it provides all of the functionality I'm looking for. Once
the custom parameter is created for each component, the components group in the
BOM according to the parameter value and I can set my balloons to show this
parameter instead of rpt.index.

The trouble is getting the parameters created and then populated. Creating is
the hardest part - the Parameters dialog allows you to work with only one
component at a time. I am looking for a way to create this component parameter
within each component in one big operation. (Even if I use copy-paste to speed
the creation of the parameter, it's still very slow to select every component
and paste in the value)

Second, populating the values is tedious when you have patterns of components
(fasteners). It would be nice if I could select multiple components and input a
value for all of them.

I did find that assigning the values can be improved by setting the repeat
region to "duplicates". With the bill fully exploded then it's possible to
double-click in the table cell to directly enter a value for the parameter. It
still requires an entry for every single component but at least it's all readily
in front of you.

If I find any tricks from PTC I'll share them with the group.

David

 

This sounds like one of those things that REF balloons were created for.

 

Marco,

I went through PTC to determine if there was any efficient way to
create all of the component parameters. There is no way to "seed" the
assembly so that all components get the same parameters within it.
There is no way to create parameters more than one at a time. The PTC
support tech recommended toolkit, which of course is a single purchase
of around $20k last I checked. No way, not for us to develop one
piddling application and never write code again.

I dug deeper and found that j-link does what I need. It took a couple
of days of poking around in the j-link documentation, but I managed to
munge together a couple of their example programs to do what I need.
The app is run in the assembly context, and it creates an integer
parameter called "bubble" (our term for a position code) in each
component. Then it populates each one with a value of -1 to make them
obvious. That was the hard part and now it's very easy.

Now you change the BOM repeat region to index by asm.mbr.cparam.bubble
instead of rpt.index and enter a value for each component. So if I
have 4 bolts holding one cover in place, I might give those specific
four a bubble number of 10, and if there are another group of 6 in
another location of the assembly, I might give them a bubble number of
16. The easiest way to do that is set the RR to duplicates and double-
click on the value in the table. Then set the RR back to no
duplicates and Pro/E will group the BOM by the .bubble value. I may
look at ways to improve the entry of the parameters.

J-link has a parameter editor in it's group of examples that I might
compile and play with, maybe even integrate my code into it for extra
convenience and speed.

David