springs

I believe Wildfire has the ability to model a spring in different states. If you are are using an earlier version of Pro you might use an assembly relation to modify the spring within the assembly. This will work if all identical springs in the assembly are compressed the same. You might also make a family table for the spring with various instances at different heights. Assembly cuts could be used to bring a spring in an assembly to the proper height although cutting a spring to height is not the same as compressing it. I guess it depends on how true to reality you want to be and how much effort you wish to expend. One last suggestion is to make a snapshot of the views of the spring in the spring drawing and then modify the spring to its compressed state for the assembly.

Another option would be to assemble the spring compressed, and then to add a cosmetic sketch of its free length which would show in the drawing as both compressed and free. That's how we show spring here, and possibly an option for you as well.

Hey, Dave, isn't there a cosmetic spring, you know, so it'll show up in the drawing as a squiggly line? Anyway, leave it to the die makers. They don't want the die designers messing with springs, they say they always cock them up.
That was the short answer, there's a longer one, if you want it.
David Janes

One trick I've used in the past: 1.) Create an offset plane. 2.) Use the original and offset planes as the boundaries for the begining Helical Sweep section. 3.) After creating the spring, set the pitch of the spring equal to # of turns divided by the Planar Offset Distance. 4.) In the assembly use relations or (in 2001 and up) Analysis Features to drive the Planar Offset Distance.
I am unsure if a Family Table Member can be used for item three above. If so then the spring can be shown as uncompressed and compressed.
M.N.M.

another possiblity is to create the spring as a surface, I often do this for studs and stadoffs in sheet metal. The features that will interfere with the sheetmetal are surfaces, and don't show up as interferences.
cheers Craig

The way that I have always done this is to model the spring compressed. Then add a datum plane at the uncompressed height. In your drawing add then note spring in shown compressed. Then show 2 dimensions one from the bottom of spring to the top and add the note compressed length. Then show the dimension from the bottom of the spring up to your datum plane and add the note uncompressed length. You might what to change the text size of uncompressed length maybe make it bold to make sure you get your point across.