this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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How many people have worked on "configurators" or "smart assemblies"? (self.mechanical_engineering)
submitted 2 years ago by Alteon to c/mechanical_engineering
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I've been interested in possibly pursuing a new business opportunity doing this. I've noticed that almost every single company is interested in automation, however very few people within the company are actually able to do something along these lines as it's a twofold problem: you need someone that's extremely proficient in both CAD software and coding. And I'm not talking about just configurable parts, I'm talking full assemblies that have logic built into them, capable of updating or generating full drawings.

So I really wanted to gauge how often you guys have been exposed to it, and I wanted to know how many people in your company are likely even capable of doing it.

In my company of around 50-60 engineers, there are about 3. The third one would likely struggle a bit, but he'd likely be able to figure things out after enough time on forums.

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[–] Alteon 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Nope. I use Inventor iLogic to create automated designs. For example, my company has a product that we generate numerous times a week. It would typically take us 4-5 hours to generate all of the necessary models, create the drawings, and then submit to customers for approval. I created a configurator that takes all of the customer requirements and modifies the design to fit their parameters, and then automatically generates a BOM for Purchasing to quote, and a drawing for our customers to approve prior to purchasing the components.

Edit: It does all of this in under a minute.

[–] prashanthvsdvn 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Sounds extremely similar to scripting combined with parametric designs. I have used scripts for Abaqus CAE and the more tedious the repetitive the work is, the more savings you get from the script.

Just curious, what’s the language involved in iLogic scripting?

[–] Alteon 1 points 2 years ago

It's VBA. iLogic adds some additional functionality by enabling the VBA to target most of the API functions within the program, so you can get the software to do just about anything that you have the patience (and experience) to code.