In the Machine

Official Autodesk Inventor Podcast Episode 37 - Adaptivity

Inventor has had something we call Adaptivity since day one although over the years I hear few and fewer people use it. If used correctly, Adaptivity is a great tool when you need to layout your design and don't know the exact sizes l but need to snap it together. There are some really good uses for it so I wanted to put a quick tip together of some ways you can use.

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Where can you use the new multi body technology in Inventor 2010?

Have you had a chance to use Multi Bodies in a part with Inventor 2010? As I talk to a lot of people using Inventor, I often get the question "aren't multi bodies just for complex consumer product parts?" My answer is always NO! There are some interesting things you can do with multi body parts in Inventor and I have a feeling if more of you knew how they worked, you would find some great uses for them, hence today's tip. One of our Inventor rock stars (Mike Oakley) sent over a sample file of one technique he has been using with multi body lately.

 The following image is from a camera viewfinder cover that was build from two bodies to make it easier.

You can see the housing was one body that was imported from Alias Studio, it could have just as easily been created in Inventor. There was another body that was created in the same part for the ribs and patterned 5 times. This is a great way to add plenty of detail fairly quick in a single part then joining the bodies together for final details.

 

Once both bodies were created, Mike used the combine command to join them together and add the necessary fillets and shell the housing. This would have taken a bit more time as features for several reasons. Now you can create and position a separate body like the ribs and in join it as a separate operation.

I hope this helps a few of you think of some interesting things you can do with multi body parts. Feel free to let us know how you are using it.

 

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What Would You Invent?

It's National Inventor's month, what would you invent?

 

Grill-it!

Those of you that are have seen the new Grill tool we added to Inventor 2010 probably haven't given it much thought since it is located in the Plastic Parts portion of the Ribbon. It was intended for plastic parts and is a really powerful tool in automating grills for plastic parts but it also works well for things like sheet metal parts. Our good friends over at Mesa, Inc. sent us this interesting little sheet metal part with a few grills in it. If you need to place things like grills or vents in your sheet metal parts take a look at this tool, it might just let you take a longer lunch today.

You start off by creating a sketch with the boundary of the gill as well as the ribs and any island.

From there you invoke the Grill tool and select the various portions of the sketch to define Boundary and Ribs.

Intermittent crashes in Inventor while using a 3DConnexion space mouse

I know a lot of you are using a 3DConnextion device with Inventor as do I. If any of you are encountering a crash in Inventor 2010 after you have been using Inventor for 10 - 20 minutes and move your mouse over the Ribbon UI, it is likely you need to update your 3DConnexion driver to fix the issue. This issue is caused by a leaked timer resource in the 3DConnexion driver and has been fixed in their latest driver.

http://3dconnexion.com/support/downloads.php

 

 

Is that real?

I am a sucker for rendered images (especially if they are from Inventor) and wanted to share some great rendered images from Inventor as well as other Autodesk products like Showcase (even thought Showcase is real-time). Inventor is a much more powerful rendering tool than most people realize so I wanted to share an image from a Flickr page. The next time you want a nice image of a 3D model, head over to Inventor Studio (It comes with Inventor) and play around a bit.

 

Give me a hole!

One question I often hear from new Inventor users is "how can I create a hole on a cylinder". Another question I hear from users that have been using Inventor for a while is "why can't I add a chamfer on both sides of my hole on a shaft?". This tip will help both types of Inventor users when creating components like a shaft.

Inventor has tools built in that we call Design Accelerators that automate things like belts, shafts, fasteners,  gears and so on. If you are looking to build a shaft with a hole through it and you want to debur both sides, here is a great tip for you.

Start out by opening an assembly or creating a new one. Select the Design tab and select Shaft. In my case I want a simple shaft so I will just specify  a 2" x 4" shaft with chamfers on each end.

 Here is where we will place the hole. Select the Feature drop down and select Add Through Hole.

You can then select the options to the right ... to change the hole diameter and the chamfer size.

 

 Once you select OK you will notice you have a hole that has a chamfer on both sides.