Now let's turn a few of these assemblies into configurations. To create a configuration you have to suppress all unwanted parts, assemblies and sketches.

We will suppress everything except the chassis.



We will go to the lower right corner and select the configurations button.


We will create our first configuration: Chassis


We will check the Properties block as shown to make sure nothing is added to our configurations.

Now we can add more configuration if we know what is required. Let's add some other configurations.


We just suppress the unneeded assemblies. Let's select the suspension configuration in the lower right to make it active. We suppress the Chassis and unsuppress the Suspension.



We will select the Chevy Engineer Assy configuration and make it active. This time we suppress the Suspension and unsuppress the Chevy Engine Assy. You can see this is much easier that suppressing and unsuppressing the parts and assemblies you would like to work with.



Now that you have the idea let's work with the Center Grinder model to show one of the basic uses of the configurations. If you would like this model, please give me a call or email me.
Joe Brouwer 206-842-0360 or joe@tecnetinc.com



We will now go to the lower right corner and activate the Bearing.



I have already created a drawing file with the AIDs defined.

Note: (I find using the word drawing for the documentation module a bit of an misnomer. We do not "draw" drawings in IronCAD or any 3D CAD system. What we do create I have coined AIDs (Associative Information Documents). IronCAD does include CAXA draft which is an Autocad clone if you need to create an electronic drawing.

We select the associated document tab and bring up the Bearing Drawing.

As you can see we have both the scene and drawing in the same file.



Let's take a look at configuration of the view by right clicking in the view area. You can see the Bearing is selected as the configuration.



You can have views on the same AID with different configurations.

You can have assemblies defined. Remember all of these AIDs are in one file. The complete Center Grinder project is in two files.

Here is the assembly and parts list, both configurations are the Assy



Here are a couple of section views.



The configuration is also used to to show exploded views. We will create a new configuration "assy exploded".



We just select the exploded configuration. This will allow you to move any component without affecting its basic location.

                           

We can now move any of the parts and assemblies as shown below. One warning: An exploded configuration should never be used for design. You should only design with all of the part and assemblies in the original position.



And the AID.



But IronCADs documentation module can be user for more than just creating technical AIDs (drawings). You can add any type of information to help make it more clear for manufacturing. It is so flexible it can be used by Tech Pubs to produce assembly instructions even marketing and sales documentation.

In this case I show a change in the assembly.