CAD Forum

my company uses a lot of tabulated parts and assemblies where we have a part number and the last two characters are XX to signify it as a tabulated part/assembly. there may be two or 20 different configurations within such a file.

we enter the configuration specific part number into the configuration name field for configuration properties, and we enter the appropriate description. this information auto populates into any BOM that uses the configurations just as you would expect it to.

my issue is this.......on such a part or assembly, we always include a table to show the individual part number and description so that anybody looking at the drawing will know what each version of the part/assembly is. the title on the drawing points to a generic description whereas the description of the specific configuration is, well, specific and more descriptive than the generic title. for example, we may have 4 parts that are all identical so the generic description in the drawing title block will simply be "part, round". but the specific configurations may be "part, round, black", "part, round, white", "part, round, blue", and part, round, green"

what I want to be able to do is create a table that pulls the configuration name (part number" and configuration specific description and that information auotpopulates just like it would in a BOM. and I want it to be simple. I don't want to create any stray files that the table points to. it's easy enough to manually create a table with a few rows now and we only rarely add configurations later so we just have to remember to manually add the new numbers to the table if/when we add a new one. but it sure would be nice to automate the table since the data is clearly there, I just don't know how to access it.

any help would be appreciated.

Paul (I assume)

It sounds as if you want a Design Table, which does what you describe. Do you want advice on doing a Design Table, or do you already know about Design Tables and hope for something else?

Dwight

As Dwight writes, you can use Design Table. But there is another possibility. It seems that your main table shows the name of the part (file name - round part) and there should be the name of the configuration (round part - blue), so it will work similarly to Toolbox.

if you have the name of the configuration as the name you want show add a custom property in your configuration with $PRP:"SW-Configuration Name" as the value.

This will give you the field you can then place in a BOM
Same thing works for file names in parts/assemblies

TTevolve wrote: ↑Fri Sep 08, 2023 2:42 pm if you have the name of the configuration as the name you want show add a custom property in your configuration with $PRP:"SW-Configuration Name" as the value.

This will give you the field you can then place in a BOM

image.png

Same thing works for file names in parts/assemblies
image.png

I suspect that he wants to drop a bunch of views of different parts on a sheet, then drop a table on the sheet, and have the table auto populate based on which parts are present.

And the answer is that I don't think that you can do that.

At best, you can create an assembly that has all of these parts in it spaced out like you show on the drawing, then drop a view of that assembly, then just use a BOM that has been formatted to only show the config name and the description.

what I want is to drop a single view of either the "generic/defaul" part or even one of the configurations as reference but then be able to built and populate the table with the configurations. similarly to how a BOM gets built when you select which configurations you want to include in your BOM. there's a pull down, you check which ones you want to include, and then the BOM adds columns to the right. sometimes we obsolete configurations so just because one exists in the part doesn't mean we'll reference it in the drawing. or sometimes we have engineering only configurations that won't need to be represented on a drawing.

creating an assembly as you mention would work, but then for every part, sub assembly, and assembly that has multiple configurations with tabulated part numbers I'd have a "phantom" assembly floating around our PDM whose only purpose is to generate a table and that would add unnecessary clutter to the vault and add unnecessary confusion to anybody looking for files. not to mention that it is more work and takes more time and effort than just manually creating my table like I do now. I want to do less work, not more.

DanPihlaja wrote: ↑Fri Sep 08, 2023 4:10 pm I suspect that he wants to drop a bunch of views of different parts on a sheet, then drop a table on the sheet, and have the table auto populate based on which parts are present.

And the answer is that I don't think that you can do that.

At best, you can create an assembly that has all of these parts in it spaced out like you show on the drawing, then drop a view of that assembly, then just use a BOM that has been formatted to only show the config name and the description.

I've not used design table.

i'll hit the google and see about it

thanks

and good assumption, but Paul is my last name! ;-)

Dwight wrote: ↑Fri Sep 08, 2023 12:49 pm Paul (I assume)

It sounds as if you want a Design Table, which does what you describe. Do you want advice on doing a Design Table, or do you already know about Design Tables and hope for something else?

Dwight

It's Saturday morning and I don't have time to get to my desktop. So, I haven't read through the entire OP.
But there maybe a good solution for this. Check out Driveworks. You get the Xpress version with SW, but you may need the full blown version.

Check out some youtubes and see if it will work for you... if not you wasted a few minutes of your time.