In the Machine

Autodesk Acquires PlassoTech

As some of you may have already heard, a few days ago Autodesk acquired PlassoTech which is a very exciting acquisition for us in manufacturing. PlassoTech is a leading supplier of analysis and simulation software for the mechanical design market that will fit nicely into our manufacturing product line.

Currently plans to integrate PlassoTech technology into the Inventor product family will bring many distinct advantages to the Inventor product line, including:

• The ability to perform analysis on entire assemblies, as well as individual parts
• The ability to perform analysis based on real-world structural and thermal conditions
• Advanced-ease-of use and performance superiority with a fully integrated simulation solution

PlassoTech technology allows FEA calculations for things like linear static stress, steady state thermal, thermal stress, modal and frequency analysis, optimization and buckling. If you are looking to do more advanced analysis, PlassoTech technology allows you to test dynamic stress, transient thermal, and large deformation analysis of solid and shell models with various contact conditions.

If you would like more information take a look at the actual Press Release.

Stay tuned.

Garin

Rename Assembly Browser Display Name

Today I was working on an assembly and noticed that the browser display names had been overwritten to something other than the file name. In a small assembly this isn’t that hard to rename a few items although I was working on a sever hundred part assembly. This would take all day just to update my browser to the file names that somebody had overwritten. To get a better idea, take a look at the image below and notice the browser names are different than the file names.



I looked around the web a bit to see if I could find a tool to rename my browser names to the actual file names and found a few tools that would get me almost there but not quite what I was looking for. It wasn’t until I was about to start doing this manual when I thought to check the SDK in Inventor. What do you know – under my nose the entire time was an assembly tool in the SDK folder that I was able to install and rename my browser display names in seconds. I would bet there are a few of you out there that have needed to do this very thing. Here is where you can find the tool in the Inventor installed directory.

This particular tool is located under Program Files > Inventor 2008 > SDK > Tools > User > Assembly Tools



Once you have installed the Assembly Tool, open an assembly and navigate to the panel bar and select the drop down menu similar to going to the Frame Generator. You will notice there is a new option (Assembly Tools) with several tools that might be of help in the future. The first tool will rename your browser display names to the file name. Some of the other tools are great for skeleton modeling and various other operations so play around a little to see if they are of use.



If you feel you have a great tip that others could take advantage of feel free to pass them my way.

Enjoy!

Garin

Autodesk DevCamps

For those of you that are interested in developing your own applications to run on Autodesk Software there are a few DevCamps with over 20 classes available at each conference. Regardless if you are a new developer or an experienced ADN member, there are classes available for all levels of expertise. This is a great chance to work directly with the Autodesk engineering teams that develop Autodesk products like Inventor.

If you are interested to learn more, take a look at the following links.

Autodesk AEC DevCamp
September 5 - 7, 2007
Boston, Massachusetts

Manufacturing DevCamp
September 17 – 19, 2007
Portland, Oregon

Who Should Attend

DevCamps are open to anyone interested in making their business more competitive by leveraging the ability to custom-fit, extend and integrate Autodesk’s products.
• ADN Members building software applications
• Customers/End-users developing in-house
• Resellers exploring solution opportunities

About the Events

Each DevCamp follows a three-day residential format. Here’s the general schedule:
• Day 1: Arrival; Opening Session begins in early afternoon
• Day 2: In-depth breakout sessions
• Day 3: Morning Content; Departure at Noon

Both conferences feature presentations from senior executives of the respective divisions. For AEC, the Featured Speaker is Jay Bhatt, Senior Vice President of our AEC Solution Division. For Manufacturing, our Featured Speaker is Robert “Buzz” Kross, Senior Vice President of our Manufacturing Solution Division.


Happy developing!

Inventor AutoLimits

It may not be obvious by the name but 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.

Take a look at the following image and notice the red hole that is close to a resistor. I have set up a limit so that if it become too close to the resistor I will get a visual indicator that will allow me to determine if I want to make any change to fix the violation.




While in a part or assembly, select the panel bar drop down list and select AutoLimits. You will notice you can create Dimensional, Area / Perimeter and Physical Properties limits. For this example I have created a distance limit that will warn me if the hole gets closer than 5mm to the resistor.



I then changed the hole location to a value that would be in violation to the resistor and get a red indicator that my AutoLimit is in violation.



Enjoy!

Garin

Non-Associative 2D Pattern

Have you forgotten about the 2D pattern tool? I recently had somebody ask me a few questions about the 2D pattern tool that made me realize there might be a few tips that many of you might not be aware of. 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.



If I create a pattern with the values I need for the majority of the bosses and adjust the other one later.



Here is where the tip comes in and what is often overlooked in the 2D pattern tools. When creating or editing a 2D pattern, expand the dialog and notice there are a few options. If you uncheck the Associative option it will allow you to make individual edits so each entity.



Now that the 2D pattern isn't associative, I can add the necessary dimensions to adjust the last boss to be in the correct location.





This is a fairly simple example where this can be helpful but be creative and I am guessing you will find a number of areas where this can come in helpful.

Enjoy!

Garin

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. One of our senior developers (Brian Ekins) wrote several articles to help Inventor users understand what the API is and how to get started. If you are interested in learning a little more take a look the following link.



http://mfgcommunity.autodesk.com/learning/articles/details/17654/

Pattern Tips (Video Podcast Episode 15)

Friday August 2, 2007 - Episode 15 Video Podcast Show Notes

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.

The Official Inventor Podcast is available for free here at the iTunes store or you can right click here and save the file to your computer.



Don't forget to leave feedback by adding a comment to this post or email me.

Inventor Rendering Collage

Before Inventor Studio was added to Inventor 11, I looked forward to the day when we could create nice realistic images and animations right from Inventor. I am constantly amazed when I start looking around the web for rendered images how often I come across images and animations that are created in Inventor. Take a look at this great little video on YouTube that is a collage of images from Inventor.

Multi-Touch Wall for CAD

Take a look at the following YouTube video of an Autodesk Labs experiment on a Multi-Touch Wall device. The wall is an input device produced by Perceptive Pixel and invented by researcher and (TED conference luminary) Jeff Han. Autodesk Labs believes multi-touch human-computer interfaces may dramatically change how products, infrastructure, and buildings are designed in the future.




For more infomration take a look at the following link.

http://labs.autodesk.com/