Multi-bodied Parts In inventor 2010

With each new release of Inventor, we discover a new tool that we wish wed had while working on our last project or the one before. The 2010 release has given us an entirely new workflow that many of us would have liked to have used many times in the past. Lets take a look at multi-bodied parts.

Often, in the early stages of a design, we need to represent the size and shape of a sub-assembly, but dont necessarily need to define every detail. Sometimes we wish we could just quickly model up a part to represent the sub-assembly, then later break it into its individual components. The new multi-body part workflow will allow us to do just that.

Think of a stanchion for a linear slide or a pick-and-place mechanism. During the preapproval design process, we need to represent this component, but dont necessarily need to show details like mounting holes and dowel locations. We may not want to model four or five individual parts, place them into a sub-assembly and constrain each part. In fact, doing so is often counterproductive as designs do change. Its possible that this subassembly is removed from the final design all together. So wouldnt it be helpful to quickly model a single part consisting of a couple of simple features and later break it into its individual components?
 

Since the mouse was modeled as a multi-bodied part, we need only to make the change to a single feature to affect all three solid bodies.
Once our design is finalized, we can use the Make Components tool to create an assembly and parts from our part and multiple bodies. As we should expect, an associative link is created between the original part and the new assembly. We can continue to edit the multi-bodied part to effect changes to the new assembly and multiple parts.

The multi-body workflow will likely be underused at first. Eventually, many users will find a need for it, learn it, and use it frequently on many projects to come.