Parts, assemblies, or sub-assemblies can be used as reference in our models. This means their Bill of Materials structure is set to reference. Reference models are commonly items that we are designing around, and don't want to show up on our manufacturing BOM. These could be supplied by outside sources or modeled up ourselves. These models show up by default as reference lines in an Inventor drawing view. Did you know there are also a number of other options available to control those reference models in the drawing view. Perhaps you want to show them as solid lines, or they keep getting cut off in the drawing view, maybe you don't want to show them at all. It seems like I have been getting a lot of questions about this lately so I thought I would share a deeper look into the referenced model as used in an Inventor drawing.
In the past week I have been at two different customer sites and both were a little mad that when using sketches in a drawing view they did not update if something moved or the view was resized. All I heard is why can't I associate this information? Well of course you can. You have the ability to show any unconsumed sketch from your model inside of your drawing views or while sketching inside of a view projecting some geometry from a model to add constraints/dimensions too. Lets take a look at doing this in each way.
Check it out
http://www.screencast.com/t/EWI8QvDi
Submitted by Dave of the INCAT CAD Geeks
Quickly crop views in the drawing when you need to show one side of 
a symmetrical part or where you only need to show a small part of a larger part or assembly. The new Crop View tool supports rectangular, circular and polygonal crop windows and avoids the need to use the breakout tools you may have traditional done in the past. The crop sketch supports sketch constraints so you can define the position of the crop window in relation to geometry in the view; you are limited to one crop for supported views.
Submitted by Dave of the INCAT CAD Geeks
Every time we design some piece of equipment that has motion to it, we need to show it in multiple positions. Is it OPEN? is it CLOSED? help me understand what this thing is doing?
These are all questions I am sure we have all heard from someone trying to assemble a design or someone from outside of the engineering department, who might not have the print reading savy of you.
Well let us all breath a bit easier now that we can create Positional Representations in Inventor.
We can use those to create overlay views right on a drawing view. This will help realy that difficult information a lot easier.
Check out my VIDEO here:
Enjoy,
Jim.....Another INCAT CAD Geek!
the Hatch Pattern Defaults. Material names can be read directly from the active style library, or they can be read from the material definitions stored in a specific part file. Either way, it will help you churn out production drawings faster with less time spent "cleaning up" your views to get the look you want.
See how easy it is....
For those of you that have been using Inventor for a while, I wanted to make sure you haven't fallen into a rut with your dimensioning techniques. Check out this example of dimensioning in Inventor drawing views as an example of what can be done in Inventor 2008!
I had a customer ask me how to do a section view today. The kicker was that it was not an orthographic section view. It was a view looking at the end of a round part with a series of holes in it. They needed a full section through the view center and one of the holes. They were not sure how to do this, and not use a jogged section line.
Well I gave it some thought and came up with the solution and decided to post it here on the CAD Geek Blog.
Check out the video of it here:
http://www.screencast.com/t/MNpMwKokb
Enjoy,
Jim
One of the INCAT CAD Geeks
