IMAGINiT Manufacturing Solutions Blog

Autodesk Inventor Tip: Center a Hole on a Face

This tip is one of those aha moments when you see it for the first time, but in no way means what you were doing before was wrong, it just means it perhaps wasn't as efficient as what I am about to show you.  The common modeling question here is what is the best way to center a hole on a face of a model.  We'll keep it simple for now with a rectangular shape but the last method also works wonders for irregular shapes.

 

Method 1 - Linear Hole Placement.

This is pretty basic way of placing a hole and is a pretty good method.  Start the Hole command and choose the Linear placement option if it is not already selected.  Choose the face of the model to place the hole.  The next step a lot of users miss or just haven't used really well.  In the first reference edge selected, hit the flyout and choose Show Dimensions and then select the feature that has the size controls for your model.

You can now link values from the other sketches and features used to control the placement of your new hole.  In the image below, the 30 value is linked into the Reference 1 box simply by clicking on it and then dividing it by 2 in order to center it on the face.  Lather, Rinse, Repeat for the second reference for the hole placement.

Method 1 Downside - Requires linking of dimensional values to stay put where you want it.

Method 2 - Sketch Placement.

The old standby.  Create a new Sketch and use either dimensions, construction lines or any combination of sketching tools to get a point centered on the face.

Finish the sketch and start the Hole command.  Choose the From Sketch option it if is not already selected.

Method 2 Downside - Requires a new sketch for a simple feature and additional geometry formatting and perhaps dimensions as well linked to other values.

Method 3 - The bomb diggity best method.

With this method, we are going to place a Work Feature on the face that will always stay in the center of the face regardless of geometry change on face itself or the rest of the model.

To place the Work Point using just the Work Point command and not the menu flyout, start the command as usual from the Ribbon or use the period key for the shortcut.  Right click and choose Loop Select to enable that type of selection.

Once you select the loop of the face the command will place a Work Point on the face that will always stay at the center of the face even if the geometry changes.

From there start the Hole command and choose the On Point placement method.  Select the Work Point and then chose a direction reference for the Hole.  This can be an edge or as I have used it here, one of the Origin Axes.

Method 3 Downside - There is no downside to awesomeness.

This last method also works on faces with no straight edges such as spline shapes or complex face profiles.  Essentially, the Center of a Loop of Edges will always find the centroid of that face to place the Work Point.

Here's hoping this look at a simple modeling placement makes your modeling more stable and easier to modify down the road!

 

Moldflow Advisor Add In for Autodesk Inventor 2012

Part designers using Autodesk Inventor or Inventor LT CAD software have the option to use the new Autodesk Moldflow Adviser Design plug-in (formally Project Krypton from Autodesk Labs) to evaluate their plastic part designs directly within the native CAD environment. Part designers can evaluate manufacturing feasibility, cost efficiency and environmental impact concurrently with product development as the design evolves.

This plug-in highlights potential design problems directly on the CAD model and provides immediate feedback on design manufacturability, cost efficiency, and on the environmental impact of the plastic material. Fill patterns, undercuts, poor draft angles, weld lines and sink marks are represented on the model, and these are updated almost instantly as design parameters are altered in the model.

These capabilities allow designers to react quickly to address identified issues and optimize their designs.  Just because you may not be the Moldflow user in your company, it does not mean you cannot use this utility.  It simply means that you can do some preliminary checks in Inventor before the Moldflow users get their hands on the model.

Here is a video on the use of Moldflow Advisor in Autodesk Inventor 2012.  Be sure to check out my complete write up in the newest issue of AUGI World magazine here - January AUGI World Magazine.

  

Inventor Part Files Too Big to Attach or Email?

So even in today's day of large storage devices and cloud storage accounts we still occasionally find ourselves constrained to file attachment sizes for forum sites or email attachments.  Thankfully, I have a 25GB email box and even more in online cloud storage.  But not everyone is as fortunate or tech savvy as the next guy.  So here is a quick tip for uploading Inventor part files to a forum or email to another consumer of your data.

I recently mentioned the End of Part marker in another post and it while it has amazing use for walking back through the history of a model, it also has the additional benefit of making the file significantly smaller.  Here we have a file 1.7 MB that exceeds a forum upload site max of 1.5 MB or perhaps an email attachement limit of 1.5 MB.

Roll the End of Part (EOP) marker up in the tree to make the file smaller.  The file does not calculate the geometry in the file so an Inventor part modeling file that is normally 8 MB in size gets shrunk down to less than half a MB. 

Now that doesn't mean the information for the file isn't there anymore.  It just means you just have the receipe for the chocolate chip cookies.  Once you give the recipe to the consumer of the data all they have to do is pull down the End of Part marker to create the cookies.  That last step is something you need to make sure they know.  Otherwise roll the marker up to only the Base feature so they know that the file isn't completely empty.

Searching Excel with iLogic

This is an interesting iLogic solution to a problem where part inventories may dictate the values of a component in an assembly. 

Perhaps the inventory changes somehow on a regular enough basis and modifying the actual code would not be practical; or the person who determines the value of that database is not an Inventor user.

Read More....

Not For Your Eyes!

Many companies will receive a contract that requires their designs to be keep confidential and secure to a select group of designers and "not for the eyes" (NFYE) of others.  The engineering manager will often struggle with a method to isolating design files from other designers and still make them readily available to the select group working on the project.  The process needs to be automated and flexible so the idea of using Window folders is dead on arrival.

Autodesk Vault Workgroup, Vault Collaboration or Vault Professional 2012 provides a secure, flexible and scalable solution to this problem.  The process for set-up is easy involving the creation of a new vault user group, category, and lifecycle state. 

To set this up we first decide on a property in Inventor files for the Vault to monitor and determine if the file should be treated as a part of the secure contract or simply added to the Vault for all engineering.  I have chosen the "Keywords" property since it is already indexed by the Vault shorten my task by one step.  I copy one of my everyday Inventor templates and rename it to be used for the secure job "Imaginit (in) - Secure Contract.  I then edit the template and add a keyword "NFYE" for the Vault to sort on.

Log into the Vault as the administrator and create a user group for all the designers that will have access to the secure contract files.  Vault groups are an excellent way to manage who has the necessary security for the project and can be edited easily.

Next I create a category for Inventor Parts and Assemblies.  You can also create other categories for other Inventor files and supporting documents but I will leave that for you to practice with.

Next I set up my category rules that define which Inventor files, when checked into the Vault, will be added to these categories.  I want to be sure that other designers outside of the secure contract work are not affected by the Vault changes.  In my example, I have two rules, one for Inventor parts and assemblies, you will probably have more.  Make sure the box "Apply rules on file creation" is checked at the bottom of the dialog box.

Next we need to define a new lifecycle state that can be assigned to our new categories.  Most of the time this is a quick process because you can simply copy an existing lifecycle and edit it for these special categories.

Next we need to edit the new lifecycle and add the desired security setting for the Secure Contract group and all files added to the Vault category "Secure Contract".  You have a variety of options, you can allow others to see the files but not have the rights to modify them, or you can prevent them from seeing the files so selecting files is impossible, much less viewing or modifying them.  In my example, I am allowing others (engineering) to view the files but they cannot modify them.  If I deny the read option, they would not be able see the files in the Vault.

The last configuration step is to assign the new lifecycle state to the two new categories.  Make sure you make it the default lifecycle state.  This tells the Vault to only add the lifecycle rules to the files related to the secure contract.

That is all there is to making a security enforced design project in your existing Vault.  One last view of the Vault for a member of the engineering group as they would see files used in the secure contract configuration.

 

New Post: Setting the Level of Detail with iLogic

iLogic requires a custom Level of Detail (LoD) before it can perform an operation that suppresses a component. If a custom LoD is not active or one does not exist you will get an error message. I get a lot of enquires about this dialog box and how one can avoid the hassle.

http://goo.gl/fb/og7FT

First Post of 2012...Taking Time to Look Back to Move Forward

A New Year. The first week of January. Thoughts lead to resolutions of fitness, house work, and social interactions. Time to lose that turkey weight, scratch long delayed items off the honey-do list around the house, and be more friendly to your fellow man. Well, this isn't a blog about personal health, carpentry projects or social etiquette. This is a blog about CAD software and design. So what do we have to work on? What should we focus on bettering this year? How about CAD Standards?

What do you mean CAD Standards?  Our drawings look awesome!  I don't dispute that and its not what I am talking about.  I am talking about something your didn't realize you needed until it was too late or haven't yet realized could be a problem.  CAD Modeling Standards.  Think about it, we have standards for how we submit to clients, the manufacturing floor or vendors, but how often do we have standards documented for ourselves?  How was that widget modeled?  Oh it was using the MDBD (Modeling Driven By Deadline) approach.  Which in engineering is a common issue.  I don't have time to model it the right way because our overhead on this project is only allotted so much engineering time.  You just hope you don't have to come back to that design or part and modify it again.  And when you do, you realize the MDBD approach was very short sighted but necessary to keep profits and ship dates rolling.

For the reason above the problem with CAD Modeling Standards is sometimes business related, but if set up properly either individually or in a team environment before your next project, or piloted during it, you can save yourself time later down the road on the next jobs that forever use similar parts or design elements of your products.  If you say that you never reuse designs, then I say, you never really know when someone will want a Design B that is almost exactly like Design A but a little different.  How awesome would it be to easily reuse those Design A files for Design B and quickly make the changes without too much rework or remodeling due to shoddy practices and shortcuts taken during Design A?  There is the benefit my friends, in the reuse, in the revision, in the reduction of rework.  Hey that's like the 3 R's of the environment!  Look I'm being green in the New Year!

So where do we start?  How about we take a look at how we model now to how we modeled during our initial inception of Inventor at our company or if you weren't around then, when you first started using Inventor.  Undoubtedly you have learned quite a bit in that time.  So why should you worry now.  There are couple good reasons to still worry.  One, you may not model the same way as the other engineers.  Two, if you hire someone new they need to know the way you do things as they may be under-skilled in Inventor or have come from their own way of doing things.  Both of these reasons is why 3D modeling can become frustrating in poor communication offices or when there are stark differences in ability of the users to model.

So to help us investigate our old models we will use a trick I hope you already know.  It is the EOP (End of Part) marker in your history tree. 

Open up a fairly complex model from a time long past or from a co-worker and roll that marker back up to the beginning of the history.  (You will notive everything still exists in the model by highlighting it, it is just not calculated at this time)

Step yourself through the model to see the progression of design that was taken.  Is there anything wrong with it?  Is there anything you should have done differently?  Did your Base solid make sense?  Was if fully constrained?  Did you use the Origin correctly?  This step-through is the next best thing to having a Delorean and a Flux Capacitor.

By answering some of these questions you are on your way to developing a 3D CAD Modeling Standard.  The biggest part of answering these questions is knowing what TO question in the first place.  That is where I will try and help out throughout more blog posts this year.  You could always start a steering committee with other designers to knock this out, as well as contact your friendly technical resources as well.  We have written enough CAD manuals and Technical papers specifically for clients over the years to understand what questions have to be asked not only of your models but also of your process with those models.

There are even companies out there that make plugins for Inventor for CAD Standards.  My favorite is DMSI with their program Validus.  Here is one of their demo videos:

 

 

iLogic Fundamentals

New Post: Controlling Parameter and iProperty Values - We can use iLogic to help us enforce standards and other values I like to refer to as “tribal knowledge”. Having customized code trap errors in design to help prevent (or at least flag) those “freelance” design changes is a powerful and effective way of managing the expense of change at the earliest stages of the process and turning your 3D models into true knowledge assets.

http://goo.gl/fb/hdTyC

If This Then That: Compare values with iLogic–MinofMany and MaxOfMany

There are several functions in iLogic that help you compare values and allow you to make rule statements based on the evaluation. Try the MinOfMany and MaxOfMany statements to streamline your code.

via inventbetter.blogspot.com

If This Then That: Merry Christmas

My man Rusty Belcher from our office in Virginia Beach posted his annual video holiday greetings card today via Autodesk Inventor. Thought I would pass it along to everyone. Kind of cool huh? Merry Christmas everyone.

via inventbetter.blogspot.com