Solidworks Pipe Routing - amending routes?

Attached is a JPEG that should explain what my assembly contains.

Basically I'm trying to work out a way to be able to create pipe routes, and then be able to easily editing them.

I want to have the flexibility of being able to roate a flang mid route and have it move all of the other piping that's' attached to it.

Currently this is a right pain in the arse!

I thought I had a moment of clarity and thought I had cracked it - I thought perhaps a better way would be to create a new pipe subassembly for each custom pipe and then mate each of them together with a concentric mate allowing them to be rotated by dragging them and also moving all of the other bits of pipe attached using the same mates.

this isn't the case - Solidworks won't let me mate a pipe assembly to another one.

and all of my pipes are fixed in place.

Does anyone have any ideas on how o get arround this?

I don't want to have to do all of my edit;s in the sketch. I just want to rotate my flanges.

I also have tees, tapers, valves etc....

I think I know how to get round this, but have only tinkered with the Add-in.

You should be able to treat each pipe route as a separate assembly and mate them as such, using stardars assembly mates and move commands.

1. Make sure you are not editing a pipe run (in the Feature Manager tree, nothing should be in blue text)

2. right-click on the routeAssy you want to move, and select 'float'

3. drag/rotate assembly as required, using the standard Assembly toolbar commands

4. Mate flanges using standard mates, e.g. Coincident on axis and faces etc.

Let me know how you get on. I'm interested on what this add-in can do!

jaims, have you gotten this to work? spittle mentioned in his post that SW wouldnt let him mate one pipe sub assembly with another.

Yeah, I made a couple of assemblies along the lines of those shown in the jpg. It works fine mating *flanges* to each other. Spittle says his pipe assemblies are fixed in place, so my guess is that this is what's preventing the mating - one needs to be floated to allow it to move at all.

You can't mate the pipe (open end, bottom-right in jpg) to the other pipe assembly, because it doesn't really exist, but you CAN mate the pipe's 3DSketch line entity using, for example, perpendicular to face, or on-axis constraints.

These were my exact thoughts on how to do this but I must have still been in edit route or something, this is working. Thanks Jaims.

I now feel the routing is good enough to be used for our our purposes.

Ok, for some reason it doesn't always work. I even tried deleting the mates that worked before the above post and then re-mating them but it didn't work. If I save, close, and re-open it does work. I'm definately not editting a part or route though when I'm having problems.

Screen shot 1 - the pipe highlighted in blue is a new custom pipe I've created. It's set to float and can be dragged around.

Screen shot 2 - trying to mate the two pipes together throws up this error. This was the problem I was having before.

to create each new custom pipe I'm dragging, dropping a flange onto the next (though in a new pipe assembly) then complete the custom piece, delete the mates, change to float and then I'm trying to re-mate now it's free to move.

what if you select the face of the flange as opposed to the edge. use the face then two of the bolt holes?

Face doesn't work.

How did you add the flanges to the route?

It seems that SW likes fittings to be added to the route, rather than just to the assembly. I managed to do it using this process, but I'm sure there's other ways:

1. Edit the assembly (select routeAssy2, click Edit Component in Assembly toolbar)

2. Right-click on the route icon in the feature manager, and select edit route

3. Drag the flange on to CPoint1 of the route, from the Design Library

4. Exit out of all the editing, mate assembly as usual.

For me this works OK. I managed to get the error message you show by doing the following;

1. Edit the routeAssy2

2. Drag a flange in to the window from the Design Library and place it unattached

3. try to mate the flange to the route. It doesn't like this at all.

Hope this helps. It's not a comprehensive explanation as I'm now in uncharted territory, so good luck!

Thing is, I want to be able to rotate my flanges. I'm able to create a whole network in one pipe assembly but it's a complete ****** to try and edit the route.

Also I'm not going to always add a single flange, sometimes, a tee, sometimes a valve, or sometimes just a quick part I've hustled up that isn't even a routed part.

So far I can mate two pipe assys by mating the sketch end points and temporary axis. However not all of my fittings are going to have sketches to mate with.

Unless I redesign the whole lot! why is it so difficult to do this!