Autodesk Inventor articles, books, news, tutorials, tips and tricks.
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Autodesk Inventor articles, books, news, tutorials, tips and tricks. |
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Inventor AutoLimits - Inventor has a handy tool that will let you visually monitor various aspects of your model. If you have ever wanted to get a warning if a wall thickness became too thin or if two holes became too close to one another take a look at what you can do with AutoLimits. With AutoLimits you can set up a limit and let the system notify you if/when a limit is in violation. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, August 18, 2007. Non-Associative 2D Pattern - If you have ever wanted to create an irregular pattern, it can often be done with the 2D pattern tool. Take a look at this image and notice you can't use a regular pattern since one offset of different than the rest. I have created a circle to pattern with the Rectangular Pattern tool. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, August 13, 2007.
Unleashing Hidden Powers of Inventor with the API - Have you ever wanted to create specific tools for Inventor to speed up a certain process or procedure? Do you find yourself repeating the same thing over and over? If so you might be a able to take advantage of the API inside of Inventor to speed things up a bit. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, August 8, 2007. Pattern Tips (Video Podcast Episode 15) - I know patterning is a common tool for many of you to use and fairly basic although I thought it was worth a quick podcast to show a few tips with patterning as well as some drawing tips such as having a hole note automatically update their quantity. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, August 4, 2007. Advanced Fillets - Have you ever wondered what the various fillet types are used for in the fillet dialog? The edge fillet is the default fillet and simply allows you to select an edge and enter a value for the fillet. In case you have more complex needs the other two types can often create what the edge fillet can't create. The face fillet allows you to select two faces and enter a radius. The unique thing about the face fillet is that it will fill in areas that the edge fillet can't. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, July 25, 2007. Making Contact - I few releases ago we added the ability to have contact in your assemblies between components. There are a few quick steps to enable contact in an assembly to help determine how various components will react in an assembly. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, June 27, 2007. Dreaded Pink Dot - From time to time when I am modeling I will make a drastic change early on in my design that results in a few features that need to be updated. The "pink dot" is often due to these types of changes early in the model where features can't locate the edge or vertex they previously were referenced to. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, June 7, 2007. Inventor Feature Recognition 2008 is here! - For those of you that have been using Inventor 2008 and have been wanting to use Feature Generator, you can now download an Inventor 11 & 2008 version. This has become a very popular tool by many of you that have imported geometry and want to convert it to feature rich parts. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, June 7, 2007. Autodesk Inventor 2008 Tube and Pipe Skill Builder - If you have created pipe runs previous to Inventor 2008, the following skill builder will help you update your pipe styles to include data for Flanged and Butt Welded runs. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, May 22, 2007. Decals Make Things Look Better - Have you ever wanted to spruce up your models a little by adding decals? Adding a few strategically placed decals can make your designs look much better if you need to present your model to others? Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, May 17, 2007. Designing with Parametric Sketches - For those of you that are fairly new to Inventor, it is a great tool to show you what parametric sketches are as well as using things like equations to set up relationships. He even goes so far as showing how to assembly 2D sketches to test motion in assemblies before you even need to create 3D parts. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, May 15, 2007. Quick Launch in Autodesk Inventor 2008 - Easily switch from New dialog box to Open dialog box and vice versa in Autodesk Inventor 2008. Thus, forget all about clicking File>Open if you are in the New dialog box or vice versa. Karla Redo, Inventor Blog PH, May 8, 2007. How to roll up the dialog box in Inventor 2008 - You’ll notice in the new Autodesk Inventor 2008 that the pin icon is not being shown anymore in the dialog box. The pin icon in the previous releases of Inventor is used to roll up the dialog box so that you do not have to move the dialog box somewhere in the screen to be able to work conveniently. In Inventor 2008, you’ll just have to right click in the top bar of the dialog box and select auto-hide. Karla Redo, Inventor Blog PH, May 2, 2007. Mirror Feature - Mirror Body - If you design symmetrical parts often there is a nice little technique I often use to see the end results even though I am only designing half of the part. Sketch half of the first feature and extrude, revolve, sweep or loft it. You can then use the mirror feature and be sure to select the Mirror the entire body option and select the mirror plane. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, February 15, 2007. Inventor Tips - The ability to copy and paste features while in a part file or between part files. To do this select the feature/s you would like to copy / paste from the Inventor browser and right mouse button (RMB) and select copy. You can then move over a different face and RMB and select paste to copy and position the feature to a new location. Another tip is the ability to find the other half of a constraint while in an assembly. To do this, locate a constraint in the browser and RMB and select Other Half to jump to the other part of the constraint in the browser. You also have an option from this context menu to select Isolate Components to turn off all parts and assemblies other than the two that participate in the constraint. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, January 17, 2007. Make it Adaptive! - How to make a bellow that would adjust as the model changes. Adaptive is a great concept tool to help flush out a design and typically you should turn off the adaptivity on those parts once you have locked down their design intent. Another area where adaptive is nice is in parts like bellows and springs that you need to update as the model changes. Keep in mind the more adaptive parts you have in your assembly, the longer it can take to compute so try to only have necessary parts set as adaptive in an assembly. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, November 10, 2006. Hide Sketch Dimensions - Have you ever been working on a design with lots of sketches and before no time you could hardly see anything due to all the dimensions on each sketch? In the browser select a sketch and right click on it (make sure you aren't in the sketch mode) and you will see an option to turn off dimensions for that sketch. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, August 3, 2006. Display Parameters in Drawings - Periodically I need to display a parameter from a part into drawings that will update as the parameter changes. First I create the parameters I want to use and attach them to each dimension. I then create a drawing with the view/s necessary and activate the leader command. I then select an edge of the part I want to attach parameters to and notice it will pick up the component (part/assembly) that was selected. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, July 17, 2006. Dynamically Edit 3D Splines - Whenever I make 3D splines I often need to adjust them to get the shape I want. I will frequently insert extra points into the spline and make the necessary adjustments. I use to use the 3D Move/Rotate command by selecting the point and right clicking to get a context menu with 3D Move Rotate. This works fine although you don't get a preview of the spline when you move the point this way. Garin Gardiner, In the Machine, June 28, 2006. Hole Note Quantity - If you need to display the quantity of like holes in a drawing view, there are a few options to do this. Create a hole note from one of the holes and edit the note. You can insert the Quantity Note property from the values and symbols section to display the May 31, 2006. |
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