In the Machine

Inventor 2012 is here!

We have been slaving away at our little cottage this past year to bring you all new software. What awaits you in the next release of Inventor? Check out several interviews Mr. Cohee conducted concerning our 2012 lineup.

  

 

It's all about the position

One of those tools that's been in the Inventor for many years that is often overlooked is the ability to show a drawing view in multiple states. Take this clamp for example, you may want create a drawing and show it in an open and closed states.

 
This assembly has a positional representation set up with the cylinder set up with two states, one in an open state and one in the closed state. From there you can create a drawing and place a view using one of the positional state.

Once you have the view you want, select the Overlay icon from the Place Views > Create ribbon. From there you can specify the overlay view such as the closed Positional Representation I created earlier.

Once you select OK, you will see your original view with the overlay view to show an open and closed state.

 

 

 

CAP IT!!

 Have you ever created a Parts List only to realize a great deal of the text is lower case? If this has happened to you, you know just how painful it is to go through and capitalize everything.

 
 
There is a much easier way to do this in the the last few releases of Inventor. To do it, open up the assembly and open up the assembly BOM. From there you can select everything you want to capitalize and right click to capitalize.

 

Now go back to the drawing and you will see it is all capitalized.

Hope that saves you some time the next time somebody forgets to select the caps lock button before they type.  

Select Features

When working on a model, I often need to select a given feature in the graphics window instead of looking for the feature in the browser. There are a few ways to do this but the easiest way is to change the selection filter from "Select Face and Edges" to "Select Features". You will see the green icon next to the material selection across the top of the screen.

Once you have changed the filter to "Select Features" you can move over your model and see it highlight each of the features as you mouse over them. You can select a feature and Right Click to edit the feature all from within the graphics window.

You can also get to the selection filter option by holding down the Shift Key and selecting the Right Mouse Button while in the graphics window for faster access.

2011 Subscription Advantage Packs are here

Today  we released Subscription Advantage Packs for many of the Autodesk products.

If you have subscription for any of these products, head on over the the Subscription site to download the desired Advantage Pack.

With the addition of the Inventor 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack, those of you on subscription will receive enhancements around ease-of-use tools, better data interoperability, expanded tools for building product fabricators, and an expanded tooling library.

Ease of Use

• Dynamic Sectioning – Appearing as a top AUGI request, many of you have requested the ability to dynamically drag a section plane through models to better see internal detail.
• Feature auto-name – By providing better naming of features in the browser, you can select and modify their designs easier.
• Flexible drawing view orientation – You can now modify drawing views after they have been placed without the need to delete and re-creating the drawing view.

BIM Tools

If you design HVAC components and need to streamline AEC Exchange, now you can automate the creation of BIM content through the new AEC Exchange API. The Inventor 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack includes a  rich API framework for AEC Exchange allowing the ability to build your own applications which can automate various tasks inside AEC Exchange.

Better Interoperability

With the Subscription Advantage Pack you will gain enhanced support for Rhino translators, 3D DWG™ in/out, iLogic Copy Design. This makes it much easier to open and save 3D DWG files as well as import Rhino files directly into Inventor. For those of you using iLogic, you will be able to copy your iLogic models  as well as remove rules when passing sensitive data to your vendors. 

Inventor Tooling Expanded Content

Gain access to more mold bases and components for AutoCAD Inventor Tooling Suite and AutoCAD Inventor Professional Suite software

•  Additional inch/imperial mold bases and components from popular vendors
•  Expanded coverage of Meusburger mold bases and components

You know what they say...a picture is worth 1000 words.

 
 

 

The New York Times discuses 3D Printing with Autodesk CEO

The other day New York Times carried a front page story titled "3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution"  by Ashlee Vance. Ashlee's visit to the Autodesk Gallery in San Fransisco and interview with Carl earlier this year. There is a brief mention of Autodesk in the final story, but the article is accompanied by a 3 minute online feature video which was primary shot in the Gallery and features interviews with Carl Bass and Brian Pene demoing Autodesk software and explaining the 3D printing process. Its worth a quick read and better yet the video is pretty cool.

 
 

Do you want 3D Annotaion in Inventor?

A prototype of 3DA is now available for all users in all countries as the Autodesk labs application, 3D Annotation for Inventor.

What can 3DA do?

Some of you are exploring methods to streamline communication between Engineers and Drafters by adding important information ON THE 3D Model.  3D Annotation for Inventor gives you this ability in an Inventor environment! 

This 3DA Prototype allows you to create and attach engineering annotations, such as dimensions, a variety of notes, datum identifiers, and feature control frames, (everything an Engineer might care about) to the Inventor model which are then displayed in the 3D graphics window.

 

Head on over to Autodesk Labs and check it out.

Inventor Service Pack 1 is here

For those of you using Inventor 2011, Service Pack 1 was released Friday (Aug. 27). Head over to our Services & Support page to download the Service Pack and read the Readme to see all the issues that have been addressed by this service pack.

Embrace the intersect

As many of you know I took six weeks off this summer (hence the light blog posting) and Jay was kind enough to post some goodies for you while I was gone (Thanks Jay).  Now that I am back I plan on getting back into it and getting some content posted for you all.

Since most of you like tips the most, that is what I thought I would start with. Once in a while I will need to create an extrusion with lots of holes or a certain shape that aren't pattern-able. If you look at the following image you would need to select 13 open profiles to do an extrusion cut. Imagine if you had many more than 13 and it would be a huge pain to select all the open profiles. 

A little trick I use it to select the outer region and do an Intersect Extrusion so I only have to select one profile. Inadvertently if I try to select all the open profiles I miss-pick and have to start over so this save me lots of time.

Start the Extrude command and select the outer area as highlighted.

From there you can use the Extrude dialog box or Heads Up Display (HUD) to choose Intersect instead of Cut. Make sure you have the right direction and termination and select OK to finish the cut.

 

 

I hope that helps out next time you need to create an extrusion of many profiles that can't be patterned or mirrored.

Official Autodesk Inventor Podcast Episode 42 - Using DWG files

I often get questions around importing/exporting DWG files with Inventor. Many of you have need to work with 2D DWG files between AutoCAD and Inventor and at times also need to open or save 3D DWG files. This episode is all around how to leverage DWG files between both AutoCAD and Inventor. I also use a great little tool that was recently updated on Labs to help take 2D drawings and turn them into 3D models.

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