Linking Parameters Between Inventor Files

hello this is steve olson the manager of training services for mesa in this video i'd like to show you an easy way to add some automation to your design by linking parameters between inventor files in the example i'm going to show you i have basically a sheet metal box that is basically a base and a lid and i want these two things to fit nicely together and i don't want to have to be constantly changing the parameters of both of them or if i need to change the size of the whole box that i don't want to have to change all the pieces individually i like to be able to change one set of parameters and have all the parts associated to that uh update now one thought you might be having is why don't you just put all the parameters in the top level assembly and then link them into the two children parts the two child parts and venerable sometimes complain of a cyclical relationship and prevent you from creating that link so what i'll do here just to make things simpler is i'll make another part file create my three parameters and then link them and then i'll show you how to then connect them to those um those files so what i'm gonna do is i'm just gonna create another standard part file here and i'll save this i'll call it i'll put it into my link parameters i'll call it box parameters save it and let's go up here to parameters i'll add a numeric one called box width we'll give it a value of let's say five add a numeric one here called box length give it a value of seven and we'll also call one box depth let's call let's set this for like three so i'll say done here i'll save those i go over here to my box assembly and go over uh to one of my parts go into its parameters down here at the bottom you can see i can say link so i'll say link and it'll ask for am i looking for an excel file or i can switch to an ipt iam so there's my box parameters ipt say ok it's going to ask for which parameters i want to bring over so i can select the ones i want and the first thing it did is as soon as i clicked on that it said okay is that parameter set for export i always forget to check that box but it's not a big deal as soon as it says okay well that needs exported and you're asking it to be brought over i'm gonna have to export to do that is it okay to to set that up and it's fine so i'll say okay i'll set my three parameters i'll say okay and now you'll see that there's a user parameter there's a line item here box width length and depth for some reason i need to change that or delete it you can see i can delete the folder or i can edit that and point to something else but now i got box width length and depth now one thing i will point out is i'm very conscious to try to name my parameters different in this file versus the file i'm going to be bringing them in if i name them the same thing it start putting an underscore one after that which isn't the end of the world but it does does create like a little bit of confusion so i try to avoid that so here for base width i'll set this to box with and i could even if i don't want to type it you can see here i can click on the cell say list parameters and those show up here so i'll say box length oops got those other values in that cell come down here to where the flange height was set as the depth and delete these use list parameters and set that to box depth say done must have typed something wrong there let me fix that there we go let me update here and you can see i got a little bit of a size change there as well so i'm going to save this i'll go back over to my box assembly i'll open up the lid do the same thing say link to box parameters bring them all over and the lid depth i'm going to leave it one inch maybe that's a parameter for the lid that we're always going to leave that way you can see there's those parameters as well so i'm going to go ahead and say done i'll update you'll see it's fitting i'll say save close this one close the box itself go back to top level assembly now one thing that you'll see see is an issue here is that the constraint that holds the box lid at the right depth is not correct so what i'm going to do here is i'm going to also link the parameters here to that same box parameters and realistically all i really need is the depth so i don't have to bring them all i kind of do that as a habit but i don't i definitely don't need to bring them all and this box depth here is actually the size that i'd want for the for that offset constraint so i could say negative box depth get everything to update now i do have a little bit of an interference here so what i probably should do is open up that base and i could even say that it is for the base depth i could say base depth minus maybe 0.25 that way i get that right offset there so i don't get the interference get everything to update and just to show you let me save this real quick if i then jump over to box parameters change the sizes here let's say i want to go down to four let's make this eight let's make this two and a half done save come back over to my assembly it's asking for an update and we got a little bit of a difference there one of my equations must be off in the base yeah for some reason the base height never got switched there we go update there we go that looks a lot better box parameters let's set this down to three set this down to go with six save box assembly update and now you're seeing the benefit now it's now updating the way i expected it to well that's all for now hopefully you found this information helpful and something you can apply in the near future if you have any questions or comments please feel free to email me at my email address there on the screen and as always thanks for watching

Channel: itsaCADworld

Views: 2,205

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: NHaGBs0TvPw

Length: 8min 40sec (520 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 04 2020