To take special note of EARTH DAY being this week, I have found a very cool tool to add to Inventor. The great people at Autodesk Labs have created an add in report tool.
After a quick download and install you can edit materials to make note of them being recycleable or even toxic.
We all need to do our part to help reduce waste and to help reduce cost, and this tool will help you quickly identify parts of your designs that can be GREEN.
Check out my video here:
Download it here:
Enjoy, and Happy EARTH DAY!
Jim...Another INCAT CAD Geek!
Digging a little deeper into those folders I traditional over look that come with your Inventor media. I was surprised with a ton of great functionality. The one near and dear to my heart is Assembly Tools that contains many great enhancements but my favorite is the ability to automatically create substitutions inside of assembly files. If you do a standard load you will be able to find this information at the following path. Please poke around at the other great features included for all areas of Inventor. It would be great to hear back on what you like and don’t like also. C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2009\SDK\UserTools.
Check out my video of how to do this.
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.
Inventor 2009 now allows any positional representations to be communicated to Inventor's Studio environment. This allows you to create an animation of a design transitioning from one assembly position to another.
Watch the Video
Contributed by Ben of the INCAT CAD Geeks
This is the second part of iProperty enhancements in Inventor 2009. Last week we looked at how we could now edit expressions that we used in an iProperty field. This week we will look at how we can further customize what actually get's output to the iProperty field. Previously you didn't have full control of what format was output to the Custom iProperties tab. Inventor 2009 allows you to control things like units, format and decimal places. You can even select a button that will apply the settings to all like properties!
Watch Video Here
Hope that helps you further take advantage of some nice tools inside of Inventor 2009.
John with the INCAT CAD Geeks
Everytime I am with a new customer I am asked can we save to a PDF? I use to always say why would you want to with the power a dwf posseses and still do. I think it just comes down to the old saying you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Two new file formats have been added to Autodesk Inventor: PDF: A Portable Document Format (PDF) creates formatted documents which appear on the monitor or printer as intended. To view a file in PDF format, you need Adobe Reader, a free application distributed by Adobe Systems.
DWFx: A 3D file. The published 2D data can be viewed in IE7 or the Microsoft XPS Viewer. To view the published 3D data, install the free viewer, Autodesk design Review, available from www.autodesk.com/designreview.
http://screencast.com/t/sRFlHvbtP20
Submitted by Dave of the INCAT CAD Geeks
In past versions of the sheet metal tools in Inventor the corner choices were somewhat limited.
The new 2009 release of Inventor has added some very nice functionality to the sheet metal tools.
Now we can edit each corner as it's own. No longer are you restricted to a single corner condition created at one time.
Check out this video where I edit the corners of a contour flange part to have several different typs of conditions.
Watch my video here:
Enjoy,
Jim......Another one of the INCAT CAD Geeks!
Inventor 2009 now includes the ability to use 2D or 3D paths to define camera animations. This allows camera animations such as walk throughs or complex walk arounds.
The video below is an example of the new Camera Path Animation available in Inventor 2009's Studio environment.
Watch Video Here
Contributed by Ben of the INCAT CAD Geeks
A new type of Level of Detail (LOD) has been added: Substitute. A Substitute is a part file
representing the assembly and is created in the owning or source assembly as a new type of Level of Detail.
The substitute part can be a derived part created from the source assembly. If the substitute part is created in the source assembly by using the context menu selection "Derive Assembly," the part is automatically tagged as a Substitute during the derive process.
When a Substitute Level of Detail is active, all other components are suppressed and hidden in the browser. Significant memory savings can be realized by
inserting an assembly with a Substitute Level of Detail active into an upper-level “consuming” assembly. In the video pay attention to the 
capacity meter watch what using derived assemblies and substitute LOD can do for you.
Working with a new user of Inventor last week he was complaining of functionality he had in MDT 
that did not exist in 2008 Inventor, having the ability to move parts inside assemblies from point to point without using constraints. Autodesk Inventor 2009 to the rescue once again, this seems to becoming a very common theme.
A Grip Snap tool for precise moves and rotations has been added to the existing tools to move and rotate one or more components, subassemblies, and work geometry in Assemblies.
The icons automatically shown in a ribbon represent the translational and rotational options available for an entity you select. Tooltips describe the behaviors they represent.
The Heads Up Display provides visual cues for the next action, a place to enter precise values, and can provide feedback about the translational and rotational degrees of freedom for the entity you select.
On the Context menu which is a right click away you can click Done to accept the actions previewed, or Commit and Ground to accept and ground the entities you manipulate with the Grip Snap tool. This tool has a lot of possibilities be sure to check them all out.
One of the new options in Inventor2009 is the addition of depth of field settings in the Studio environment.
From the Inventor New Features Workshop:
Camera depth of field has been added. It helps when compositing images and photos. It also adds more of a photographic element to the realistic renders you generate. With the depth of field controls you can:
We all know that one person you needs to be the center of attention. When we relate that back 
to Inventor we could always display the Center of Gravity (COG) and receive X,Y,Z, but not much more. With 2009 Inventor we have some long awaited abilities to utilize the COG. The COG glyph now displays in a part or assembly model with three planes and a point. You can select the planes or point when measuring from an object to the center of gravity. To select the planes or center point, Selection Priority must be set to Feature Priority or lower. You can also resize the planes of the glyph to better match your visual and selection requirements.
To identify and document the center of gravity location in a drawing view, you can select to have a center mark display at the current calculated center of gravity for the model. The center mark's location is associative to the model and you can add annotation to the center mark. In the past you 
may have done this with adding a sketch point or something else to represent the COG.
Life is only getting easier with the newest release of Inventor. With the addition of Parts list filters you now have the ability to control which items are displayed in your parts list. Choices you have for filters are: Assembly View Representation, Ballooned Items Only, Item Number Range, Purchased Items and Standard Content. These filters are used in combinations and are available either globally in the Parts List Style, or locally 
in the Parts List itself. Check out the video to see these items in action.
Check out my video of how to do this.
http://screencast.com/t/xTzIG6lzRV
Submitted by Dave of the INCAT CAD Geeks
One of the great new Sheet Metal features to come along with Inventor 2008 was the improved Contour Flange command. This could be used to create some elaborate box type shapes, but it had limitations with internal type flanges. Autodesk is improving the sheet metal environment once again with Inventor 2009, and one of the improvements now allows many types of internal contours.
Contributed by Ben of the INCAT CAD Geeks
A new option for anyone who has used the trim and extend tools in AutoCAD. Inventor 2009 now allows an explicit selection for cutting edges by holding down the CTL key. This allow a quick trim operation in situations where many picks would have been previously required. 
