Working with Family Tables
A Family Table is a means to define a collection of CAD parts (or assemblies, or user-defined features) that share the same generic properties, but deviate slightly in one or two aspects, such as size or detail features. Each member of the family (for example, a particular size of a family of similarly designed wood screws) occupies a row in the table, while attributes that are either shared or differentiated among the members of the family appear as the table column headings. Table field cells contain the object values for each member of the family.
CAD parts (or assemblies) in Family Tables are also known as table-driven parts.
Using Family Tables, you can:
• create and store large numbers of objects simply and compactly.
• save time and effort by standardizing model generation.
• generate variations of a CAD part or assembly from one file without having to re-create and generate each one.
• automatically create variations and configurations of the design.
• create a table of CAD parts that can be saved to a print file and included in CAD part catalogs.
Family Tables promote the use of standardized components. They let you represent your actual part inventory in Creo Parametric. Moreover, families make it easy to interchange CAD parts and subassemblies in an assembly, because instances from the same family are automatically interchangeable with each other.
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Because modifications to generics are inherited by instances, recommended practice is to avoid using generics as assembly components.
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