ASCENT Blog

Enhancements to Inventor Presentations in 2017 R2

By Jennifer MacMillan

Since my Webcast last week on Creating Exploded & Animated Views Using the Presentation Environment I have had the opportunity to install and investigate Inventor 2017 R2. This release continues to improve the Presentation Environment. If you are reading this blog and realize that you haven’t had the opportunity to see what was new with 2017 R1, I would highly recommend watching my webcast (click here). In R1 the entire workflow and interface for how you create animations and snapshot views was revamped. My webcast talks (and demos) you through these really exciting changes. I loved what they did in R1 and now with the R2 release the workflow has streamlined even more. Here’s a summary:

• To be consistent with creating drawings from a Model Browser, you can now also create a presentation.

          

• Although available in R1, the Local or World coordinate system options in the Tweak tool didn’t seem to reorient the triad properly. This seems to be working as expected now in R2. The Local option now reorients the triad locally using the component’s coordinate system and the World option reorients the triad relative to the assembly’s coordinate system.
• You can now multi-select tweak and action items in the timeline and drag them as a group. Thank you Autodesk!!
• When editing a tweak or action item Duration, the toolbar provides for alternate ways to define the time. Previously the Duration field was not available. The Duration value for multiple items can also now be edited at once.

           

• Love this one!! It is now possible to quickly align two Tweaks to start or end at the same time. You simply select them using the <Ctrl> key, right-click and select Align Start Time or Align End Time.
• Tweak and action selection in the timeline has also been made easier in R2. To quickly select all timeline entries before or after a specific entry, right-click on the entry and select Select > All Before or Select > All After. These options can be used to select multiple entries at once to make edits. In the case of a group Tweak, you can right-click on one entry in the group and select Select > Group to select all entries in the group.

            

• There were no changes to how snapshot views are created; however, when publishing a snapshot view you can now enter a Resolution value and enable Transparent Background to further customize the output of the raster image.

           

I hope that this update to my webcast helps. If you wanted more formal content, a chapter is dedicated to the Presentation Environment in ASCENT’s Introduction to Solid Modeling training guide. Enjoy all the changes!

Jennifer

feedback@ascented.com

Revit Family Practice – Floor and Slab Families

By Martha Hollowell

This fall I will be blogging about families. My focus is going to be on some of the lesser used but still important types of families including annotations, profiles, and 2D families. I will also be doing a webcast in December about parameters which ties right in with some of these families as well.  Most of the information is coming from the Autodesk Revit 2017 BIM Management training guide. 

Today I want to focus on creating floor types. Floors, (architectural, structural, and foundation slabs) are system families very similar to walls, roofs, and compound ceilings. System families are created and modified in a project or template file by duplicating an existing element type. For example, to modify a compound floor, you edit the type (as shown below) and select the Structure parameter. This opens the Edit Assembly dialog box which enables you to specify each layer of the assembly.

How To: Create a Compound Floor or Slab

1. Start the one of the floor or slab commands.
2. In Properties, select a type similar to the one you want to create and click Edit Type.
3. In the Type Properties dialog box, click Duplicate....
4. In the Name dialog box, enter a name for the new type and click OK.
5. Next to the Structure parameter, click Edit....
6. In the Edit Assembly dialog box (as shown below), modify the layers of the assembly as required, and then click OK.

7. Modify any Type Parameters in the Type Properties dialog box.
8. Click OK to close the dialog box

Assembly Information

The top of the dialog box lists the Family, the Type name that you gave to the new type, and the Total thickness (which is the sum of the layers defined in the structure). It also includes Resistance (R) and Thermal Mass which are automatically calculated from the materials assigned to the layers.

Layers

When you specify the layers for the compound element, you assign them a Function, Material, and Thickness. This is where you can get creative. For example, add a carpet layer that references a specific manufacture’s material choices.

Options

 

• Use the buttons to insert additional layers and to rearrange them in the layer list. You can also delete layers from the list.

• The Core Boundary function defines the layers above and below the wrapping; a heavier line is displayed when a plan or section view is cut.

• Editing a wall assembly works from the exterior side at the top of the list to the interior side at the bottom. For floors and roofs, you work around the layers above and below the wrap of the Core Boundary.

• Floors and structural slabs (as well as roofs) and have an additional parameter that relates to sloping for drains. When Variable is not selected, the slab is set to a constant thickness and the entire element slopes. When Variable is selected, only the top layer slopes.

Customizing Floors and Slabs

Now that you have the mechanics of how to customize floors in place you can add this to your arsenal of productive Autodesk Revit tools. What types of floors or slabs do you need to customize?