Assembly visibility settings in Inventor

I sometimes run across an Inventor user that has played around with some of the "settings" and now they can't clearly tell which part they are editing in the context of their assembly. This is usually due to the "Component Opacity" setting that is commonly overlooked (or turned on without knowing what it does). Take a look at the following video for an example of the component opacity as well as another overlooked visibility option.

Watch Video Here

Contributed by Ben of the INCAT CAD Geeks

One Section At A Time

Have you ever had the need to look at an assembly and figure out what's going on with the inner workings of some of the parts. It would be nice if you could "Dynamic Section" the assembly so you could drag a cut plane through the assembly and get a cross section. The DWF viewer offers this functionality as part of it's tool set. You can accomplish this in Inventor as well if you follow this short video on how to dynamically section an assembly....

Watch Video Here

Hope this help "see" your designs a little better.

John With the INCAT CAD Geeks

Stop the "Save Copy As" madness: Copy Components instead

I often hear people say they have to use the "Save copy As" option in Inventor in order to create a "similar" component as one already in their design. In most of these cases they just happened to overlook the "Copy Component" tool in Inventor's assembly panel. The Copy Component tool allows us to copy parts and assemblies within our current design and place them with new file names into our current window. This requires about half the time as the Save Copy As workflow. Check out an example in this video:

Watch Video Here

Contributed by Ben of the INCAT CAD Geeks

Advanced Simulation on Autodesk Labs

I just found the time to check out the new Advanced Simulation technology preview on Autodesk Labs, and I am mightily impressed with the direction Autodesk is taking this technology. You can define all kinds of design variants and design criteria to use in a functional study.

Take a look at this video for an example of this new technology in use:

Watch Video

Contributed by Ben of the INCAT CAD Geeks

Added Functionality - Assembly Tools

Looking back through some of the past posts that we have done I saw the one about additional tools for drawings.

Well there are a whole lot more tools in this area that I wanted to give a preview to.

I found one that I use often in assemblies to check how many DOF or Degrees of Freedom are on a part.



Another really cool one is the ability to sort out your model tree alphabetically.


These can be found in the install path for your Inventor software.
i.e. - C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2009\SDK
Run the user tools install.
Then look here:
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2009\SDK\UserTools\AssemblyTools

Check out my video here:


Enjoy,
Jim......Another INCAT CAD Geek.

Can't Figure out a model's Assembly Contraints? Check out iMap on Autodesk Labs.

Autodesk Labs is at it again. In addition to a new User Interface preview, Labs has published a utility called iMap that allows you to graphically view the relationships between components in an assembly and to manipulate the assembly contraints from this new graphical interface. Can't figure out how a coworker assembled components? Try out the new iMap download on Autodesk Labs at:

http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/inventor_imap/

Contributed by Ben of the Incat CAD Geeks

Digital Prototyping Task List - #1 "Drive Constraints"

As mentioned a few weeks back we all need to create a Digital Prototyping Task List.

So here is the first one for you to check out, this great tool enables you to test some basic function of your assembly.

Drive Constraint - Within the context of the assembly you can Right click on your assembly constraints and test the range of motion for the given value. There are tons of different ways to use this command, this short video is only an ice breaker to get you thinking about checking it out.

WATCH VIDEO HERE

Enjoy,

Kevin with the INCAT CAD Geeks

Explicit angles instead of Expletives for angles

New to the upcoming Inventor 2009 is an option in the "Angle" assembly constraint called "Explicit Reference Vector". This allows us to define a direction perpendicular to the rotation direction and thereby enforce the "right hand rule". Check out this video for an example:

http://www.screencast.com/t/gZfdQ0dj

Contributed by Ben of the INCAT CAD Geeks.

I'll Take Multiple Parts for $1,000...Alex

So here we are trying to get our assembly built and I am sick of placing each part into the assembly one at a time.
Well help is hear TODAY!! Yes we can insert groups of parts right into the assembly file and then start placing constraints to hold them together.
We can either multi-select from the place component dialogue box or we can also drag and drop from a Windows Explorer file list.

Check out this super time saver for assembly building in this quick video:
Click for video

Enjoy,
Jim
One of the INCAT CAD Geeeks!

Skeletal Modeling, It's not Halloween but...

The following link contains an example of the new capabilities Inventor 2008 provides with its new "Export Geometry" tool used in conjunction with the updated "Derived Component" command. These tools enable a Skeletal Modeling workflow in which a change to the Skeleton will only affect the components using a specific set of derived geometry or parameters from it.

You could hypothetically have a skeleton with hundreds of parameters in it, and have hundreds of parts linked to these parameters in an assembly. When the skeleton is changed, only a small number of parts would need to "Update" in Inventor. This allows the technique to be used with much larger assemblies, and makes them much easier to manage in Autodesk Vault. Check out the example in this link:
http://www.screencast.com/t/0epJ8y1CTl

Ben with the INCAT CAD Geeks