I noticed that Mark Flyler over at Imaginit posted a great article on pulling images from Inventor to be used as technical illustrations, Power Point or on web sites. You might simply want to get an image directly from your Inventor screen or perhaps a more customized image rendered from Inventor Studio. Mark starts out with the basic and works his way to Inventor Studio (including a few tips for using in Power Point). If you have ever needed to capture images out of Inventor, head on over to his blog post.
When creating Inventor drawings, there is a great way to bring over 2D sketch information from the Inventor model. This works well if you have something like text represented on your Inventor model and want to see also have it visible in the Inventor drawing view.
To do this, open a part or an assembly and create a sketch with some text or draw a rectangle. Save the part and create a drawing with a drawing view of the component.
In the browser locate the view that you want the sketch to be visible in and expand the view to show the part or assembly that has the sketch.
Right click on the part or assembly and select "Get Model Sketches" to expose the visible sketches.
Thats it - you will now see all of the visible sketches for that part or assembly. You will also notice it shows them in the browser and you can turn off sketches that you aren't interested in seeing.
One of our good joinery Inventor users (and reseller) put together a great example of how to use iLogic. I know you don't all do joinery work but I am sure you can find some useful things that iLogic can do for you. It is surprising just how easy to use iLogic and doesn't require you to be a developer. If you understand basic if/than statements, you are good to go.
The Autodesk Subscription Advantage Pack for Inventor® 2010 is now available in English with more languages to follow shortly. This set of enhancements offer new productivity tools, improved support for architectural fabrication, and easier-to-use simulation capabilities.
New and improved tools simplify common tasks, such as dimensioning, inserting blocks, and multi-view creation, helping to boost everyday productivity. With more architecturally relevant content, annotations, and drawing options for designing architectural elements, Subscription customers can more easily share designs and documentation with clients and suppliers in the architectural, engineering, and construction industries.
In addition, the powerful simulation tools in Autodesk® Inventor® software have been enhanced to make it easier for users create and validate multiple design iterations. Simulation scenario setups have been streamlined, and the visual feedback and simulation results are now clearer and more customizable.
If you have an active subscription account, head over to the Subscription Center and pull down the Advantage Pack for Inventor 2010.
To see it in action, check out the YouTube video of our own infomercial king (Rob Cohee).
If you live in Northern or Southern California, KETIV is hosting a Manufacturing Academy.
The Academy provides local access to world-class information that are taught by pros—the engineers, designers, and support people who do this every day. They'll share their years of experience on what works and what doesn't.
As many of you are already aware, Autodesk released a new tool to the subscription center earlier this year called iLogic. I posted a blog post back in March it you would like to get a little more information. Inventor iLogic extends and enhances parametric design capabilities, automates tedious design tasks, and adds higher levels of design intelligence to your digital prototypes. With an easy-to-use authoring capabilities and an intuitive user interface, Inventor iLogic integrates seamlessly with Inventor.
I know many of you have downloaded it and are using it and I also know many of you haven't had a chance yet. I received a Top 10 Do's and Don'ts document from the design team that can help you get started. It is also useful if you have been using iLogic to help you make more robust models with iLogic.
Just as you create blocks in AutoCAD, you can also create symbols in Inventor. One of the questions I received the other day was a way to control insertion and connection points. When you create a sketch symbol you can control not only the insertion point but also additional points to connect various symbols together.
To create a symbol head over the browser and right click on Sketch Symbols under Drawing Resources. From there you can select Define New Symbol. Now you can create the sketch geometry and text you need to define the symbol.
It may be necessary to add prompt text similar to AutoCAD or have it pull model property values such as mass properties. This can be accomplished from the text dialog and specify the type of text used.
One of the lesser used and often not realized is how you set insertion and connection points into the symbol. This will allow you to specify where the insertion point is and if you want to use various end points / center points as connector points to connect multiple symbols to each other.
Center Point:
Used to create hole centers for hole features. The Hole feature automatically selects a hole center point in a 2D sketch.
Connection Point Grip: Construction point used to help position sketch geometry
Set Insertion Point Grip: In drawing sketches, a sketch point can be used as a connection handle to snap together sketch symbols, title blocks and drawing borders.
Select a point then you can specify what type it will be by selecting the Center Point drop down in the format portion of the ribbon to see the three types. You can only have one insertion point although you can use as many connector points that will show up when inserting and dragging symbols around.
Once you have specified the insertion point and additional points as connector points, you can now save the symbol and start inserting it into your drawing.
Perhaps I am slow to the draw on this one but I recently updated my Space Pilot driver and ran into something really cool I wanted to share. I haven't used the LCD screen on it much since I got, so you can imagine my surprise (after I installed the latest update) to see it was displaying something that I hadn't seen before.
It now shows the file name and type of document that is active as well as file size, creation/save info. More importantly it shows the mass, volume, material and density without having to go to File > iProperties.
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.
Don't forget to head over to iTunes if you want to subscribe and download these automatically when a new episode is available.
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.
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