[Andy A.]

I've played around with the two best methods for doing this:

Greg's method will work. I haven't been able to duplicate exactly his results though. Using V10, features placed in a top level assembly do not reflect as features in the affected parts. Therefore, as I follow Greg's procedure, the original .ipt files would not be modeled with the holes present, although they would appear in the assembly. It still works, and it's easy to understand and implement, but it can cause problems later on. This method lets you produce an assembly that has the features present with out modifying the original parts. This can be helpful and it can be detrimental. It is helpful if you are unsure of where to place the holes, if you have similar parts that might be used again in another assembly and you don't want multiple copies of slightly different parts, or multiple proposed versions of the hole pattern (as in multiple assembly's with the same parts and different hole patterns in each assembly). It's a nice way to quickly play with features with out worrying about keeping parts 'jiving' with one another. However, when you do decide on a hole pattern, and you start marking up your part drawings (.dwg's), you'll find that the holes are not present in the original parts. This may or may not be a problem for your purposes, since you might not even be using printed drawings of the parts, but it would get me a serious ear full from my CAD instructor if I turned in a project with high level assembly features like that in place of fully featured parts.

I would probably use M.Krass's method, as it is the most adaptive to future changes. By driving one feature with another features constraints, you can make quick changes to the feature, or eliminate that adaptivity if you no longer want them to line up and have it all reflected in the original .ipt's. The end result are fully modeled parts that look just like they should when finished. It uses the best technique, and there is much to be said about that. Still, it requires some skill to properly apply all the constraint, time to modify each part and the abstract thinking to keep it all straight in your head.

So, it comes down to how much effort you want to put into this. One method is quick and 'dirty' (not to disparage the method) the other is slower and 'cleaner'. My guess is that since this is 'just' an OI piece, the extra work required to make an easier to understand part drawing and more adaptive part file probably isn't worth it, and Greg's method is a better pick. He may have a setting in effect that would save assembly features into individual parts, although I can't figure it out. Perhaps an earlier version of Inventor?

Any hints Greg?



-Andy A.