how to design a machine frame

[Jimng]

I have to design some machine frame. I define family table parts for different sections of beams and made an instanace for each assembled beam. I had bunch of problems with this..



1, Family Table become very large and complex as I have to make holes and cut in different beams, all of them appear in the family table as separate column.



2, I get lots of references between beams. Making my assembly not robust



3, Making Mitre Joints are very difficult



4, If I want to modify over all length of a frame, I need to go into family table and modify lot of intances.



Any one has good suggestions to my questions. Your helps are very much appreciated.



Thanks

 

[Israr]

Have you heard of EFX 3.1? It is Expert Framework Extension for both Pro/ENGINEER 2001 and Wildfire. Basically an auxilliary application. It is a magnificent software for frame works like you need and steel works where constant cross section beams, angles, tees, channels blah blah bah are used. Everything is automatic. There is almost sufficent library of all standard sections but you can add specific sections to the library that you need.

I have recently accopmlished a project in it and without it it would have taken a year and I just took 4 and a half months to complete it.

If you need any help mail me.



Israr

 

[stefanba]

Hi James Ng,

my name is Stefan from the company who develops the module EFX that Israr mentioned. If you like I can give you a test installation for some weeks. Just send me an E-mail

Stefan

 

[jimsmith]

Hi



If you would like to see and overview of EFX then go to www.ptc.com/go/efx. There is a movie that you can watch that shows some basic concepts.



Jim

 

[Jimng]

Hi All,



I really want to express my thank to all of you who had helped me with my EFX questions.



My Designer have completed their machine design in less then one week with great help of EFX (VS 4 week without EFX).



Thanks again

 

[ksboo79]

this sounds interesting.. just one question, if i have a strucure designed using this extension, can this design be edited without this extension? how would the model tree look like?

 

[Israr]

Yes of course, actually this is a toolkit. The model tree will look normal. If you want to edit and add something new you can use conventional techniques.



Israr