auto balloon stops after 20 balloons

[berg_lauritz]

I just wanted to auto-balloon some stacked parts. It automatically stops after 20 balloons - which are randomly chosen. If I change i.e. to 'sequentially' it will always take 1-20 - otherwise it's fairly random.

Any idea why? I just had to manually link 48(!) more balloons!

[berg_lauritz]

I talked to HawkRidge now and they said the following:

The software is functioning the way it was designed. I'm sorry but this is not an SPR.

I still do not understand why you need the balloons and not just the BOM. Can you please explain?

Just to be clear, the parts are not stacked as they would be in the real instance. They are overlapping. They are in the same exact volume. So SOLIDWORKS does not show them with balloons because it cannot see the other iterations.

I can not believe this. If I call them out in sequence it DOES show overlapping parts. How can this be 'the way it was designed'?

If I stack all parts onto each other (same volume) - auto balloon STILL CALLS OUT TWO BALLOONS AND NOT ONE.

Why??? WHYYY?

Sorry for the rant.
Conclusion:

• Never use auto balloon & trust it.
• Always double check with i.e. timesavers that all balloons are present.
• Link to the origin of the part if you have to.

[AlexLachance]

Jesus christ, I hope the guy wasn't fricking serious with this question..

I still do not understand why you need the balloons and not just the BOM. Can you please explain?

[AlexLachance]

I talked to HawkRidge now and they said the following:


I can not believe this. If I call them out in sequence it DOES show overlapping parts. How can this be 'the way it was designed'?

If I stack all parts onto each other (same volume) - auto balloon STILL CALLS OUT TWO BALLOONS AND NOT ONE.

Why??? WHYYY?

Sorry for the rant.
Conclusion:

• Never use auto balloon & trust it.
• Always double check with i.e. timesavers that all balloons are present.
• Link to the origin of the part if you have to.

Hey Berg,

Since you won't be using auto-balloon anymore, did you know you can view from the BOM which balloon is missing?

Careful though, if you have multiple pages and haven't "loaded" them in memory of SolidWorks, it will not see the balloon on those pages.

[berg_lauritz]

Jesus christ, I hope the guy wasn't fricking serious with this question..

Should've clarified that it's basically a stack of decals that every unit gets! We call out the general positions on the top view of each assembly - but placing them properly makes 0 sense because they vary so much across the unit and they often get adjusted depending on Canadian/US laws etc.
It's way easier to have an SOP with photos for that instead of clunkily placing it in 3D....

How can I see that in the BOM? I do not know!

[AlexLachance]

Should've clarified that it's basically a stack of decals that every unit gets! We call out the general positions on the top view of each assembly - but placing them properly makes 0 sense because they vary so much across the unit and they often get adjusted depending on Canadian/US laws etc.
It's way easier to have an SOP with photos for that instead of clunkily placing it in 3D....

How can I see that in the BOM? I do not know!

Hey,

You can click on the arrows on the left of the BOM to have it expand.

And then, if there's a sort of balloon in the box, it means it's been ballooned!

Just make sure to go through all your pages before checking this, so that they are loaded into memory, or else it will tell you nothing has been ballooned, like it does in my example (My BOM is on a page of it's own and I added a balloon to show you the distinction of with and without a balloon)

[berg_lauritz]

Hey,

You can click on the arrows on the left of the BOM to have it expand.
image.png

And then, if there's a sort of balloon in the box, it means it's been ballooned!
image.png


Just make sure to go through all your pages before checking this, so that they are loaded into memory, or else it will tell you nothing has been ballooned, like it does in my example (My BOM is on a page of it's own and I added a balloon to show you the distinction of with and without a balloon)

SO NICE! Thank you, merci. I love that this is so easy to find!

After my last email they came back to me & now they at least added a SR for it.
They changing point was that those 'hidden' parts ARE getting called out if you select sequencing. But then it will limit the number to the visible amount.

Here a dialed down version of it:

Other beautiful things about this:

• The amount of balloons varies with the selected scale a little bit (20 or 21 in my case)
• Changing the scale of the view seems to have an influence but a bigger scale does not always yield more balloons!
• Hidden lines visible called out significantly less balloons for me (9-13)
• deleting & adding the balloons again did not show always the same numbers
• (For reference: Sequencing the balloons DOES call out hidden ones but it keeps the amount of balloons to the 'visible' ones)