Hypothetical situation

I want do model a set of bevel gears and a housing. First file, all features
are defined with a common construction geometry sketch and a design table.
The second file is one of the bevel gears. The third file is the other bevel
gear. The fourth file is the housing. or at least enough of it to locate the
gears. How do I go about tying all of this together. At the moment I am
using one file to define and model all of the parts, saving it as three
different part files, inserting them in the assembly and suppressing
unwanted copies of the parts.

Bob

 

Bob,

Some people use a construction assembly with the the layout sketch, the two
gears and the housing. That way you keep the parts separated from the first,
but you have an extra assembly. Some people use the Split Part feature to
save off the three bodies into separate parts. That used to be a bit flaky,
which is why some people do it the way you are doing it, but it has gotten
quite a bit better and is supposed to be even better in 2009. If you plan on
reusing and renaming your base part and the split parts, you might want to
stick with the way you are doing it until 2009 proves that it can handle
that painlessly.

Jerry Steiger

 

You should use configurations for the gears, putting all of them in the same
part file. Then just switch configurations as wanted.

 

It is a mating pair of gears with some shared parameters. I use a design
table both gears need to be part of the same configuration. the common
parameters are the tooth specifications and angle between the input shaft
and the output shaft and diametrical pitch. The non shared parameter is the
number of teeth.

Bob

 

I used to design hinges, so I needed an assembly with a stationary
design component and a moveable component for use at higher levels.
This allows for a moveable component that references fixed in-context
definitions.

For the stationary "Design position" component, I used an envelope
instead of a regular component. The envelope could be used for in-
context design, but would not show up in BOM or upper-level
assemblies.

Over the envelope master I placed a regular component of the same
model. The regular component was mated to the envelope and placed in
different positions as needed.

I have an example at <http://www.esoxrepublic.com/models/>, in file
"Hinge.zip".