I'm wondering if I should avoid Equations? I can accomplish
everything I want to in a dynamic design table? The only benefit
I've seen with equations is they get computed every time there is a
rebuild.
1.) So why use equations when dynamic design tables give you all this flexibility plus the power of excel?
2.) My next question is has anyone made a addin that everytime the rebuild event is called to force an update to the design table for that particular part/assembly?
1.) So why use equations when dynamic design tables give you all this flexibility plus the power of excel?
2.) My next question is has anyone made a addin that everytime the rebuild event is called to force an update to the design table for that particular part/assembly?
Idealy you will have a single design table placed at the top level, with that single design table you will drive all the skeleton sketches placed at the top level assembly (either directly inside the assembly or placed inside a part on that top level assembly, we use a part named "referencial_geometry" for that purpose).
Then, you may need to compute some values at certain sub-assemblies or parts placed at the lower levels, values tant can be computed using as imputs values from the "skeleton sketches" (those values can be dsign table driven dimensions or diven dimensions defined on the skeleton sketches), there is where you use equations, since you do not want to place a design table on lower level components (to avoid the process of opening each low level component and "open", "update" and "close" each design table, whihc wvwn if you automete the process with a macro or an API can take a lot of time and can produce crashes of the software).
To automate the rebuild and the update of design tables, you will need to define a macro or a VB add-in that you can execute from inside the main assembly whihc will:
1.- Open, update and close the design table
2.- Execute a force rebuild (at least two times, since on large top-down assemblies, sometimes a single rebuild do not rebuild all the components, particularly when you use "driven" dimensions as imputs for an equation or as imput of a relation).
Some time ago I post a macro to update all desing tables inside an assembly, look for the post using a search for my name. I know it is posted on this forum.
Have fun!