Inventor Mass Properties in Productstream

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  Brian Schanen joined Autodesk in 2005 as a Product Designer and currently is a Customer Success Engineer for Autodesk’s Data Management products. Brian has taught at Autodesk University numerous times and has authored white papers on Vault and Productstream. He works with customers to implement a complete digital prototyping solution specializing in Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Vault and Productstream. Brian lives near Detroit, Michigan.

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  Inventor Mass Properties in Productstream
  December 12, 2008, 08:22 PM Brian Schanen

  A significant benefit of Autodesk Productstream is the ability to pull data from an Inventor assembly file. The Bill of Material structure in Inventor is read by Productstream, and the properties within the files can also be exposed as User Defined Properties. These are useful to pass on to upstream systems such as ERP/MRP. In this example, we'll look at the steps to push mass properties from Inventor into Autodesk Productstream's Bill of Materials.

  1.       With the Top level assembly open in Autodesk Inventor, invoke the Bill Of Material editor dialog.

  

  2.       Click on “Add Custom iProperty column” button and create a new Text data type.

  

  3.       Select a cell under “PS_MASS” column and click on “Create Expression” button.

  4.       Bring “Mass” property from pull down menu and click “Insert Property” button from the dialog.

  

  5.       Populate the property for other rows by using “ Add Custom iProperty (all component) option from the Right Mouse button context menu.

  

  6.       Save and check in the assembly.

  7.       In Productstream. Go to Tools> Administration>Item tab> Properties and create a new User Defined Property and map the custom mass property.

  

  8.       Now, you may “Assign item” or “Update item” on the Inventor assembly in Vault to see mass properties.

  

   

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Comments

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  December 19, 2008 02:07 AM Charles Courlander

  This is a nice idea. It is a real pity that it does not work - at least on systems tested by both us and our reseller. The resulting mass that is written to the custom iProperty is incorrect by a factor 1000. We model in kg, we get a PS_MASS in g. This problem was reported to Autodesk in October 2008 and we would very much like a solution.

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  February 23, 2009 09:12 PM Madhanagopal Thiruvenkatachalam

  Hi, I have written the following macro to achieve step 1 to 5. This also addresses mass units in Kg. Please try the following steps. 1. In Inventor, Hit ALT+F11 (or Tools > Macro > VBA Editor) 2. Copy and paste the following under "Module1" Sub Update__PS_Mass() Dim oPropSet As PropertySet Dim oProp As Property Dim oUOM As UnitsOfMeasure For Each abc In ThisApplication.Documents If abc.DocumentType = kAssemblyDocumentObject Or kPartDocumentObject Then Set oUOM = abc.UnitsOfMeasure oUOM.MassUnits = kGramMassUnits te = CStr(abc.ComponentDefinition.MassProperties.Mass / 1000) & " Kg" Set oPropSet = abc.PropertySets.Item(4) On Error Resume Next Set oProp = oPropSet.ItemByPropId(99) If (Err) Then Err.Clear On Error GoTo 0 Call oPropSet.Add(te, "PS_MASS", 99) Else If Not oProp.Value = te Then oProp.Value = te End If End If End If Next abc ThisApplication.ActiveDocument.Save End Sub 3. Run the above macro from "Run menu > Run Sub / User Form" Hope this helps. Regards, Madhan