Turn the Nightmare of Tracking Thousands of Joints and Fasteners into an Accurate, Manageable Process
Defining thousands of items such as joints and fasteners has traditionally been a manual, time-consuming process for aerospace engineers. Given the complexity and enormity of the airframe assembly process, this tedious approach is highly error-prone and can delay product deliveries. However, VISTAGY's Airframe Design Environments (ADE) reduce this complexity by automating the process so aerospace engineers can easily capture non-geometric information related to the joints and fasteners of the airframe assembly, resulting in a far more manageable process.
The data generated by ADE is used downstream to complete the design and manufacturing processes. One such area is the automatic generation of the Bill of Materials (BOM) or fastener hardware report. This report shows the number of fasteners of each type used in the assembly. The fastener hardware report gives a list of part numbers, the types of parts, and the quantity of each part. The materials used and the part descriptions are also included.
The Fastener Hardware Report shows the list of all hardware for three assemblies.
In order to generate this report, the engineer needs to define the joints and fastener locations in the assembly.
To define a joint, two or more mating parts of the airframe and any non-modeled components (adhesives, shims, etc.) must be added.
The joint includes several attributes such as part references, non-modeled components, and other non-geometric information.
Once the joint has been created, the engineer defines all of the fastener locations on the joint. A fastener location is defined by selecting a point location and fastener specification (hardware and installation requirements). This information is used to calculate the stackup and assign the appropriate fastener part number to the fastener location based on the computed grip/pierce length.
Calculating the stackup automatically populates the "Suggested Fastener" with the appropriate fastener part number.
A stackup report also gets generated, which includes the pierced parts of the joint, the non-modeled components, and the hardware defined from the fastener specification.
The stackup report shows the list of pierced parts and hardware included in the full stackup value.
The ADE's Fastener Hardware Report functionality pulls this information from the fastener location and displays it in a BOM. The engineer simply selects one or more assemblies to pull information from and selects the "Update Fastener Hardware Report" button. When multiple assemblies are selected, the resulting Fastener Hardware Report can show fastener quantities per assembly or as a sum of all assemblies.
The fastener hardware report is displaying the hardware for each of the three assemblies separately.
The fastener hardware report is displaying the hardware for the three assemblies grouped together.