IMAGINiT Manufacturing Solutions Blog

Autodesk Inventor Beta Project: Codename Sikorsky

We are excited to announce that the Autodesk Inventor Beta is now available on the Autodesk Feedback Community. The goal of the beta is to engage customers in real-world product validation. Beta Resources The Sikorsky Beta this year is being hosted on the new Autodesk Feedback Community portal. This new portal provides a rich environment for maximizing customer participation, including:

Download Resources – separate downloads for 32 bit and 64 bit versions

Serial Numbers – automatic assignment of product keys and unique serial numbers

Webinars – webinar schedule and recordingsFeedback Tools – easy to use forms for Problem Reports and Feature Requests

Testing Tasks – suggested testing tasks for each enhancement area

Discussion Forums – a new private AE forum for Autodesk Sales. Please use this and avoid posting new threads on the public forums.

 For information on joining the Autodesk Feedback Community, please visit: https://beta.autodesk.com/signup/

via mfgcommunity.autodesk.com

Eight Reasons to Participate in Autodesk University Virtual

Remember, Autodesk University Virtual is Free to anyone and Subscription members get a Free Premier Pass.  There are dozens of reasons to participate in AU Virtual. Here are just eight of them:

• (Premier Pass) 50+ Classes with Live Q&A: Log in to practical training and live Q&A with top professionals. Virtual classes are loaded with tips and tricks and useful downloads to help you upgrade your job skills and boost productivity.
• (Premier Pass) 350+ On-Demand Classes: Learn at your own pace with technical training sessions presented at AU 2009 and available to you on-demand after the event. Get up to speed about the latest features and techniques of Autodesk 2010 products.
• (Free Pass) Product Clinics: Get answers to your questions from product experts. Product clinics feature a 15-minute introduction followed by 45 minutes of live Q&A.
• (Free Pass) General Session Keynote: View the AU keynote in real-time. Autodesk CEO Carl Bass, guest speaker Amory Lovins, Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, and Autodesk CTO Jeff Kowalski offer insights about the present and future of design innovation.
• (Free Pass) Industry Keynotes: Learn directly from Autodesk executives and guest speakers about the key trends unfolding in your field and how they’ll affect the way you work in the next 12–24 months.
• (Free Pass) Technology Main Stage Presentation: What do strategic partners HP, Microsoft, Intel, and other industry leaders have in the pipeline? Get the scoop in this engaging town hall style presentation.
• (Free Pass) Technology Showcase: In a series of informative interviews and roundtable discussions with Autodesk developers, you’ll learn about the innovations in hardware, software, and services that are likely to impact your business in the near future.
• (Free Pass) Design Slam: Watch and learn as top professionals and Autodesk executives go head-to-head using their favorite software tools in these 20-minute design competitions.

20 Inventor Tricks in 20 Minutes: Preview

This year at AU I am conducting a 20 Tips in 20 Minutes Presentation on the Exhibit room floor.  When thinking about the amount of tips I can offer with Inventor I definitely got over 20.  I saved the juiciest ones and the most practical ones for the presentation.  Which if you are AU this year, come and see me on Wednesday December 3rd at 12:40 in the Autodesk ATC theater. 

This is one tip I considered using but since not everyone has Inventor Professional or Routed Systems so I decided against it.  The work was already done for it though, so here it is.  This is a great tip for those who are not getting any younger or those that have perpetual monitor growth (because the 30 in Mac monitor just seems too small).

When inside the Routed Systems 3D Orthogonal Routing Tool, use your + sign and - sign to increase or decrease the size of the tool for better visual clarity.

Get Productivity When You Need It With ProductivityNOW

Monday mornings can be a tough on any 9-5 worker, but are especially rough when you have to finish the work a co-worker didn't finish before he left on extended vacation last Friday.  As was the case with a friend of mine and long time blog reader Justin this week.  I call him Justin to keep him and his co-workers safe.  I get an email from our dedicated support team to help out with an in depth question that they know I have experience with.  They know I have taught many Inventor classes over the years and that I am a hard guy to stump.

Justin had just returned to Inventor after being away from the software for about 6 months and had not used it since his company upgraded from 2008 to 2010.  He had a problem with his sketching geometry not remaining constrained to itself.  Essentially the sketch would not create automatic geometric constraints.  This aggravated Justin very much so he pulled out his support contract and gave us a quick ring to our Support Number.  Although he did have a lot of other options instead of a phone call, but this is usually a more preferred direct contact method and too small an issue for our Remote Desktop log in.  Here you can see all the options available to a ProductivityNOW member.

Now this is a common troubleshooting issue to a lot of returning or new users to the software and once you see the solution it makes total sense.  Now since Justin had been away from the software for a while he didn't have time to dig in the Help system for an answer and no one to ask at work.

After taking Justin's call and hearing his story I immediately took it upon myself to help Justin get reacquainted with the software and our solution options.  I quickly pointed him to a section of our Ascent course ware to help him find the correct solution and even a quick data set where he could try out a solution.  Since we keep a running data base of all our sister company's course ware in ProductivityNOW it allows Justin to not only read about a topic in a more practical and less technical way but to also develop his own personal development agenda to get back up to speed on important updates to Inventor.

Over the course of the phone call I ended up answering four more questions for Justin and got him back on track for his companies project he needed to get started.  I showed him how to log Support Cases for email response and if he really gets in a jam with his Content Center how to request Remote Access for our experts in our Solution Center to diagnose.  At the end of the phone call he asked..."Is that you in that picture on the left side of the page?".  Inside ProductivityNOW we also stream all of our blogger's RSS feeds, IMAGINiT news releases, and Autodesk hotfixes and service pack updates.  This opened up another issue Justin found and noticed the Service Pack was designed to fix it.

In just under 30 minutes we were able to quickly address Justin's issue, solve 4 more he didn't know he had and get his Inventor patched and all up to date.  He thanked me and said if he needed anymore help he now knows where he can start.   There are many ways our Solution Center can help with your questions and design questions ranging from the quick response answer to a more in depth study of parametric design.  Take a look at the support options and overview of the different levels of ProductivityNOW (click below to enlarge).  You never know when you will be Justin...Justin Case.

 

Inventor Automatic Feature Rename

Inventor has been able to rename modeling browser nodes for a very long time now.  But what is the reason for renaming them?  Usually it is so you can keep track of your features when the design starts to get large or users start sharing models in the design group.  Perhaps the most commonly modified of these is extrusions and holes.  The inherit problem with this habit is that when the design changes it may be necessary to change the browser node again which adds steps to the design.

Enter the Feature Rename (click to download) add in created by Allen Gager, Design Engineer and CAD manager at A.T. Ferrell Company.  Feature Rename works with Inventor 2009 and 2010 and for both 32 and 64 bit OS.

 

The feature has really saved me time over my modeling and allows other users to quickly find the features I am discussing without mousing over all the holes and extrusions of my part.  As an added bonus to the 2010 version it allows the addition of Multi-Body modeling naming for new solids in the tree.  The feature rename tool will also rename features after an edit occurs such as changing a normal drilled hole to a counter bore hole.

Multiple Vault Clients, One System?

From the way up north comes an AE with superior Autodesk Data Management skills. Michael Thomas from our Saskatoon, Saskatchewan office in Canada brings us a great tip on the Autodesk Vault product line. Mike is PSE and ATC certified and was one of the first to complete IMAGINiT's TakeAIM certification. With over 10 years of Autodesk software experience and his strong communication skills, he is highly regarded within the industry.

With the 2010 product offering from Autodesk we saw the introduction of new “flavors” of Autodesk Vault. This included Vault Workgroup, Vault Collaboration, and the renaming of Autodesk Productstream to Autodesk Vault Manufacturing. With these new products came tighter restrictions on how the different versions of Vault can communicate with each other.  In the past the Vault Client was able to log into a Productstream server and perform basic Vault tasks. However with the 2010 products  each version of Vault can now only talk with a Vault Server of the same type. This means, for example, that a Vault Collaboration Client can not log into a Vault Manufacturing Server and vice versa.

So you might be thinking so what? You’ve already got your Vault Server in place and your Vault Clients are communicating happily and everyone is checking –in and –out data to their heart’s content. But what happens if your customers or vendors do not use the same version of Vault? If could even be internal to your company, one division uses Vault and another division uses Vault Manufacturing. One of the advantages of using Vault is always having access to the most current version… i.e. live data…. and searching the database quickly. No one really wants to go back to email and ftp and being concerned with stale out-of-date files.

This is where post TS1106987 (Connecting to different versions of Vault 2010 (Server) from the same client) in the Autodesk Cracking the Vault blog caught my eye. It states that to work with a mixed environment of Vault types you need to install the corresponding client applications. What it is saying is that if you want access to a Vault Manufacturing vault you’ll need to install the Vault Manufacturing Client.

In the image below you can see that I’ve started two different Vault Explorers, Vault and Vault Manufacturing on the same system. The login information is different (note the server name) as each corresponding server is installed on a different system. In fact I can have both logged in and running at the same time!

Having multiple client types installed does not change the functionality of each client. The Vault log will not have any of the Vault Manufacturing functionality. 

What about licensing? With the advanced versions of Vault (Workgroup, Collaboration, and Manufacturing) the license actually comes from the server you log into. So if you have customers or anyone else outside the organization who require access to your Vault all they will require is the client. When they log into your Vault the client software on their system will “pull” a license from your server via your license manager.

This is all “fine and dandy” but what about the CAD Application (Inventor or AutoCAD)? When the Vault Client is installed a Vault add-in is added to the CAD application so that it can communicate with the Vault directly. How does this work when multiple Vault Clients are installed?

It turns out that the CAD add-in behaves very similarly to the Vault Explorer Client. The Vault type that you log into determines the available functionality within Inventor or AutoCAD. In the following screen shots you should see that by simply logging out of one Vault and into another the functionality available to Inventor is adjusted automatically. Notice the additional icons in the ribbon (Control Panel) as well as the slight difference in the Vault browser (Vault Manufacturing highlights checked-out files in blue). In fact the “Go to Vault” icon will even launch the appropriate version of Vault Explorer!

So even if you can no longer use your Vault client to log into Productstream this does not mean that you are limited to access to only one Vault type.

Inventor Fusion R2 - Includes Change Manager

The second iteration of the Inventor Fusion Technology Preview is out now from the Autodesk Labs site.  The much anticipated second release includes many items missing from the first release as well as some interface enhancements such as a scale and snap increments for the press-pull operations.  Most notable though is the enhancement to allow a Fusion model to be brought into Inventor and have the changes made in Fusion be accepted or declined in the new Fusion Change Manager.

Both models are shown, before and after being edited by Fusion. Colors in the graphics screen show the types of changes:

•    Red - deletions
•    Green - additions
•    Blue and yellow - faces moved

This is now time to really experience Fusion in what it was meant to do.  To go back and forth between Direct Modeling and History Based Parametric Modeling.  This type of functionality coupled with Inventor's large amount of file translators (SolidWorks, Pro-E, and, Catia just to name a few) is really a game changer is a lot of ways.  Some other companies have stayed clear of this methodology while other have tried to embrace it and failed either on a documentation side or a practical side.  This technology is perhaps not only a software that demos well but also performs job functions the way corporations intend to instead of just showing programming muscle which others have done in this Direct Modeling trend.

Notes: Only available to subscription customers, you must register both add ins after zip extraction, and change manager functionality currently only supports original Inventor models (So that means if you have a Catia file you will have to translate it in Inventor first then open the IPT in Fusion for modifications to take place).

Autodesk Support for Products on Windows 7

Autodesk has announced that in lieu of the release of Windows 7 for PCs that it will support some of the existing product line as of right now!  As of this posting there are no Service Packs or Hotfixes that require to be installed separate from the current build on your installation discs or existing service packs.  These products include:

• Autodesk Inventor 2010
• Autodesk Inventor LT 2010
• AutoCAD 2010
• AutoCAD LT 2010
• AutoCAD Architecture 2010
• AutoCAD Electrical 2010
• AutoCAD Mechanical 2010
• AutoCAD MEP 2010 
• Autodesk Algor Simulation 2010 

Source

Inventor 2010 Subscription Advantage Pack

One of my favorite times of the year is when Autodesk releases a Bonus Pack (now called Subscription Advantage Pack).  Last year AutoCAD had three of them and Inventor had one great one.  The best thing about these extra sets of tools is that they don't change the file scheme so they can be used alongside and collaborate with standard installs. The other known is that the tools will be in the next release of the software although most likely enhanced further.

PDF: Inventor_2010_Subscription_Advantage_Pack.pdf (use right click and Save Link As... for some Firefox users)

New to this release are a volley of enhancements but focus primarily around:

• FEA and Simulation - UI enhancements, Material selection, and Reports
• Drawing Manager - Blocks, Views, Annotations, and Model Refs
• Fabrication & Architectural - Settings, Templates, and Symbols

Some of my favorite enhancments this time around are the Replace Model Reference in the drawings (solves this problem: link), the updated Simulation Browser, and Initial View Extents document settings.  Although the Fabrication and Architectural settings are also a nice improvement for the growing Autodesk Revit/Inventor user base.

Download the PDF and explore the enhancements.  If you are on subscription, get over to the site and download it today!  Autodesk Subscription Login: Subscription.autodesk.com.  If you are not your companies subscription manager or do not have a log in contact your sales contact or program manager to get the ball rolling.

Analyze Interference Tips

Analyze Interference (Inspect Tab > Interference Panel in 2010; Tools menu in 2009) is perhaps one of the most commonly used commands at the end of the design process for Inventor models.  The command itself is pretty straight forward, but that doesn't mean I don't get questions from time to time on it.  So in this post we will look at a tip and some understanding of what the Analyze Interference command entails.

When the command is initiated, you are prompted for two sets to define interference between.  This is where our tip comes in.  The user does not need to pick two distinct sets for analysis.  Just start clicking away and then select okay.  No need for the second set button even though the arrow stays the menacing RED color.  Either way will still show you the interferences in your model.

Once OK is selected you will see a red highlight on screen of all the modeling overlap in your design.  This is important to discuss as some of the overlaps may be intended just as press fit dowels or other parts.  Some overlap may not be desired such as a vendor part that was designed around or unforeseen constraint offset error in assembly.  Perhaps one of the most questioned interferences are when they are seen on threaded holes.  This we will take a deeper look at considering there is a way around it but has its own consequences.

Interference is detected here for good reason in my opinion.  It is designed to show you that you did design a threaded and not a clearance hole where you wanted.  Now on large machines that might not be a very clear thing to see in your analysis.  Imagine you have 600-1000 bolts in your design.  This would cause quite a cluttering of red on your screen.  In that scenario use the Level of Detail Rep for suppression of Content Center components to ease the red devils.  If you are renegade and don't use the Content Center then you will quite a bit of more work on your hands.  Hey that's two tips in one post, oh how I spoil you guys.  If you are of the latter inclination the next step may prove to be your savior here, but it is not without it's own drawbacks since it changes the actual modeling behavior of your parts.

Every Part has its own Document Settings as I am sure you know by now.  If not, I will be covering it in an upcoming Inventomization post.  But there is one setting in here that we are looking at and that is the Tapped Hole Diameter setting.

With this setting you can change the Hole size calculation to define the diameter to either the default Minor Dia, Pitch Dia, Major Dia, or Tap Drill Dia.  For those rusty on the terminology...Minor Diameter is your diameter to the root or bottom of the thread, Major Diameter is your diameter to the crest or top of the thread, and Pitch Diameter is the diameter between the crest and root.  There is also an option here to apply these to changes to Legacy holes (holes already created in the model).

When anything other than Minor is chosen you will be prompted that the Drawing Manager only creates acceptable threads when Minor is chosen.  I have images below that show some of the differences with this.  The top image is the normal Minor option and the lower image is the Major option which provides no Red Interference but does create a less technically correct documentation.  With this knowledge you can apply your company methods to whichever works best for your models.

Minor Diameter option above
Major Diameter option below