Despite the great assistance I received from Jason, I am still struggling to develop a workflow.

What I am trying to do:

1. Establish a clear, well-defined workflow for Top-Down Design

2. Determine the best way to pass a pattern of features from a Top-level model all the way down through an assembly into its constituent parts.

Why I am trying to do it:

1. I believe that Top-Down Design has a place in my company's design methodology, based on its products - one-off special purpose machine systems

2. I think that I should be able to define certain features as driving features and propagate them throughout an assembly in order to minimise the risk of things not fitting together when they are made.

My Example:

Imagine I have a 2-part assembly. The first part is the base, which could be a cuboid box.

The second part is the flange, which could be a circular disc.

The base has a circular pattern of tapped holes on one face.

The flange has a matching circular pattern of clearance holes on one face.

The resulting assembly is of the 2 parts fitted together, face mated to face, with a suitable screw in each hole.

The fasteners are fitted to the assembly by dragging a toolbox component into one of the holes and patterning that component based on the hole pattern.

My Question:

How do I ensure that the holes I create in my Target Parts are the correct size?

I have a method to propagate my hole pattern sketch from my Envelope Part into my target part, but that only sets the hole positions, not their sizes. I could control the hole sizes by using Convert Entities and tracing the holes in the Envelope Part, but there are 2 problems with that approach, I think: The holes in the target part would not be Hole Wizard Holes, so I think ToolBox would struggle to fit screws to them;

and

In some parts, my holes would be clearance holes, whilst in others they may be tapped holes. I can think of no way to propagate the fact that they are, say, M6 holes, but not that they are tapped holes, or that they are clearance holes to my Target Parts.

I want to propagate some of the intelligence of a Hole Wizard Hole, but still have the opportunity to change other parts of that intelligence.

I hope this all makes sense. It does to me, obviously...

SW2014, SP5

I look forward to the collective wisdom of the forum.

Thanks,

John