Family Table or Template?

[Jonathan21409]

I am currently confused what to do here. I have the task of making a parts library for my company and I am wondering which direction I should go. I have made family tables for all sorts of fittings and pipes, but now I am looking at templates and am wondering if those are the way to go since nobody will be able to mess a template up.We have about 5 Pro E users and are currently switching to DDM for our management program so I'm not quite sure how it will handle family tables.


However with all these family tables that we'd be using for these parts it seems like a template would just save a lot oftime sifting through parts and then risk of changing parts and messing up assemblies. Let me know what you all think.





Thanks

 

[looslib]

We used both.


Family tables are nicer for things like hardwrae items, where the possibility exists that you will need to change the size. This is truer for bolts and screws than it is for nuts and washers.


Templates allow you to have consistency in your individual parts which will make it easier to do replacements.


Either way, you need to limit who has RW access to the library.

 

[SRINIVASANIYER1]

For geometrically similar parts... Family table is the best way especially when you need families of assemblies. For all other similarities, templates are ok.