Size of the Family

The family must be large enough so that it is worth overhead involved in creating it. Two or three similar parts would be better created using basic parametrics. A family that size would also not provide much insight into the versatility of the process. Some families are extremely large. This is when Families of Parts shows one of its greatest advantages. All of the parts in the family can be included in the table, using about 3 or 4 lines of text worth of disk space per part. The geometric models of the parts can be quickly and easily created when needed. However, the time savings of having all of these parts in the table has to be balanced against the time it takes to build the family table. If a large portion of a family will likely never be used, it might be better to leave that portion out of the table. The use of a spreadsheet's copy and paste commands can greatly cut down on the time it takes to enter the data, so that may help balance out the time savings and expense.

Last Modified: Wed Aug 28 14:41:29 EDT 1996