I have an assembly with allot of hardware I would like to be able to gather all the hardware in its sub assembly and automatically stack the similar parts on top of each other so I can create a hardware kit drawing without having to manually move all the hardware to the same area.
Do you mean you want to automatically create this sorta thing?
Yes, after I insert all my hardware, I want to create a sub assembly for the kit (already know how to do that) and then when I open the kit assembly I want to click on a piece of hardware and then have all the same parts get stacked on top of each other so I can organize the assembly (like you shown) and make a drawing for it.
Right now I have to mate all the parts to each other to stack them together, I don't know if there is an automatic feature for this.
Pretty sure that's way more work than you need to do.
There's no way for your "kit" subassembly to have all the hardware assembled in the correct places and be driven by the main assembly, but then stacked on top of one another when you open it by itself. If you're making a separate subassembly, what is the benefit of stacking a bunch of instances on top of one another? The number of instances isn't actually parametric or being driven by anything, it's just the number you drop in. If you really want a bunch of instances, you can do a component pattern with an infinitesimal offset value and create as many instances as you want with one click. Then it's easy to edit.
However, my suggestion would be to link individual drawing views of your hardware components to a BOM. So, you create a view of the main, driving assembly (doesn't need to be on the printable area of the sheet), add a BOM (also doesn't need to be printable), then add a view of each component you want to show. Link each view to the BOM in its View Properties. Then attach a balloon to the component in the view (you can hide the leader and the balloon circle if desired) and set the balloon properties to display the BOM quantity. In this way you get a fully parametric hardware drawing. If the main assembly changes, your part counts on the hardware drawing will update automatically.
Great idea Josh! That sounds simple enough. I assume that the BOM that you create would have to be a parts only BOM, otherwise it wouldn't account for quantities in sub assemblies (unless you have a separate drawing for those sub assemblies and their respective hardware, of course).
Dan Pihlaja wrote:
Great idea Josh! That sounds simple enough. I assume that the BOM that you create would have to be a parts only BOM, otherwise it wouldn't account for quantities in sub assemblies (unless you have a separate drawing for those sub assemblies and their respective hardware, of course).
Yep, definitely Parts Only style. I use them almost exclusively, to the point where I forget that the other options exist at times!
You might want to look into using "Copy with Mates", or the "Pattern Driven Component Pattern" feature. Either of those allow you to add a group of components in additional locations with just a few clicks (and without needing to create a sub-assembly).
Is using SolidWorks Treehouse any use to you?
You can also export from Treehouse to an Excel table:
I'm not sure I understand your question, since you already mentioned creating a sub-assembly of the hardware. You can add Mate References to the hardware so that they'll snap into place when you add them to an Assembly. Will that help?