Autodesk is trying out something new this year in an effort to become more sustainable in their delivery of their software to clients. This is currently being tested out by subscription customers through the subscription portal.
Simply login and download your latest release of the 2010 software. Remember that you need a valid subscription login which typically belongs to the administrator of your in house CAD needs. **Some of the products are not uploaded yet and this functionality is only available in certain countries.**
Remember that the Subscription site also contains previous bonus packs for your existing software if you are not quite ready to install 2010 or if you have lingering projects in older versions. Expect iLogic to be upgraded sometime very soon and look forward to more bonus packs throughout the year.
Welcome back to the Manufacturing Blog for a large week of announcements. Autodesk released their information on the new Manufacturing Solutions Divisions 2010 product line. Above you find the links to various What's New documents and overview of the three new Vault programs. The 2010 products page and IMAGINiT Virtual Trade Show will be live later today as well. Since I am an avid Inventor user I will focus the rest of this post on the changes and enhancements with Inventor 2010.
I have links above to our Virtual Trade Show (where you can see demonstrations and talk with Sales and Technical personel), Product Pages, and the Technical What's New documents. To say that this release is a large one is an understatement. I haven't seen this many new features since the early days of AutoCAD.
Here is a sampling of items to check out in the What's New document:
New Design Methods: Plastic Part Design, Multibody Design, Layout Design
New Capabiltites: Inventor Tooling, Assembly Level FEA, Drum Cam Generator
Enhanced: Interopabilty, User Interface, Bill of Materials, Weldments, Licensing, iFeatures, Sheet Metal Design,
New Commands: 6 commands for Plastic Part Design, three new panels full of commands for Mold design, 4 sheet metal commands, actually I lost count; too many to mention
What I wanted to really talk about are two new product offerings, and some hot button topics weighing on my and possibly some of your minds. You can expect more of the What's New material to pop up here in more detail throughout the coming weeks along with all my other material as well. I also have some links at the bottom of this post that pertain to 2010 in some way as well.
Inventor Tooling Suite (formally Inventor Mold) - New!
Now I have been extremely lucky to have been playing with this for about two months prior to Hopper Beta3, which is about two months longer than other resellers and I have to say I am very pleased about where this software has come from over the last two years. Yes, two years. That is how long this software has been in development. It was formally called Inventor Mold during its beta and usability testing in China and Latin America. It is far superior to Pro-E's and Catia's offering and is also an Autodesk product unlike Dassault SolidWork's third party add-ins. To give you an idea of the power behind tooling I was given a part by one of our Application Engineers and was asked to create a core and cavity for them. They were frustrated because the complexity of the part and the nuances of using derived components. After half a day they gave up and passed it to me. I finished it in 4 minutes with Tooling and even allowed for isotropic shrinkage (see below). Tooling can accomplish a lot more robust modeling because it has access to higher level ASM (Autodesk Shape Manager) functionality than previously available in Inventor.
Plastic part to Core and Cavity in less than 4 minutes
Here are some of the other features of Inventor Tooling:
Automatic Drawing creation (yes you read that right)
Automatic Core and Cavity Design
Pattern Parts for Family Molds
A Mold Boolean Command
Runner, Gate, and Cooling Channel, and Side Core Design
Moldflow plastic flow analysis tools
Mold Content Center for Mold Base components
Use or modify standard ejectors, lifters, sliders, sprue bushings and locating rings
Ribbon and Classic Interfaces - Enhanced!
The Ribbon has been added to the interface with the temporary option to revert back to the Classic UI. I thought it was a big enough topic to write a whitepaper on it.
Love it or hate it, Microsoft drives the PC world, either jump on or get left behind. Autodesk took a look at the human side of things this round and decided to ease the user into the Ribbon if they still had concerns, but I recommend jumping in feet first if you already have Office 2007 since you are already getting used to the interface.
The magic eight ball says this will not last forever. But it is nice to have a software company that at least warns you of eminent change unlike some of the competition. Actually I visited a client this week that had Vista 64 bit machines and 8 GB of RAM but had not yet moved to Office 2007, when I mentioned the Ribbon I got a blank stare. I am glad these companies will be able to have a transistional period.
Inventor LT Suite - Official Release!
Well it looks like the labs download of Inventor LT is finally coming to fruition. So everyone who got the free candy for the past two years, it looks like it will be time to pay the piper. Inventor LT has been a great no-cost tool for users to learn basic part modeling and that was the original intent of the labs offering. Pretty quickly Autodesk learned that companies wanted a low cost solution from the full Inventor Suites for certain personnel and tasks so they allowed usage of the product in commercial settings and multiple languages.
Inventor LT benefits:
Low price Inventor offering vs other suites
Part Modeling design and Documentation
Inventor Studio Rendering
Import and translation of other CAD formats
So where does this benefit come into companies now that they have to buy it? Inventor LT is perfect for several tasks. I especially like the first one since I know companies that have a seat of other pricey software ONLY for translation.
Use it as a translator for other CAD data (now with Catia!)
Use it for your support staff to create studio renderings
Use it for interns/employees to just create/detail parts
Use it for an AutoCAD user to transition to Inventor
Use it for an intern/employee to translate legacy work
I also heard through the grapevine that Inventor LT will have a bundling option with AutoCAD LT to get both programs at a very decent price. So you could do all your 3D modeling in Inventor and then detail it in AutoCAD LT if you really wanted to. All the small tool shops stalling to go to 3D have just been given a lifeline if you ask me. Nothing eases the transition like value packaging. And how many of those toolshops would love to have Inventor LT to translate all their Catia, Pro-E, SolidWorks, NX, and other file types without having to buy a sear of each of them or an expensive standalone translator?
Now carries the AutoCAD moniker - New!
Yes, Autodesk Inventor is now AutoCAD Inventor. Now I have spent years telling customers that Inventor is not AutoCAD, but with AutoCAD starting to blur the lines with the 2010 Parametric Drawing (which looks eerily like Inventor's sketching system) and 3D free form modeling, I can understand the relationship more. There are roughly 5 million AutoCAD users out there and they need somewhere to go after 2D loses its luster. Having the AutoCAD branding on Inventor and seeing the sketching system in AutoCAD can ease the apprehension between staying behind in the market and becoming a best in class manufacturer.
Occasionally I get requests for exercises that are not part of our normal training program, but are beneficial nonetheless. This one comes from desire of our Inventor Advanced Part and Introduction to Solid Modeling students wanting to do more with Patterns but not finding their obvious choice in the Rectangular Pattern command. Personally, I believe this command to be a misnomer like most advanced users. After you complete this exercise you will be able to understand how these advanced patterns can be created and gain a deeper perspective on the command.
Inventor's Rectangular Feature Pattern contains advanced options for complicated patterns of geometry including curve driven patterns based on curve length, distance, and spacing along a curve. The Curve Length option uses the length of the path geometry (e.g., line, spline) as the total distance between the first and last occurrence coupled with more complex sketches this type of Pattern is quite powerful.
You can learn more about this command and more in one of our Inventor training classes or Manufacturing webcasts:
Until next time, may your pattern curve in the right direction!
As more and more companies switch to 3D modeling the question of utilizing existing 2D data and referenced 2D data from collaborative sources frequently arises. Users go through the gamut of questions including but not limited to:
How valid is my 2D data?
What are the benefits of migrating 2D geometry into 3D?
How do I quickly create 3D models of 2D data?
How much data can I reuse?
How much data will need to be recreated?
The purpose of this white paper is to address some of these questions, their proposed solutions, and the most effective way to use Autodesk Inventor to aid in the process.
In the next part of the Inventomization Series comes a look into Colors and Textures of your models. Adding correct Colors and Textures to your model aids not only in internal collaboration, visibility, marketing, but overall clarity of your design as well. Autodesk Inventor gives us a nice swath of these to begin with, but are almost never all the ones a user needs.
Let's first understand how color interacts in the environment of Inventor. Color and Texture is assigned first and foremost by the physical properties in the model's iProperties. This can be overridden with model's color wheel, and individual faces and features can be overridden by their properties. Here you see the order of override from greatest control to basic control.
Inventor has this structure for the best possible control of color and texture to communicate design to collaborative parties. A part may call for Mild Steel but in the assembly there are too many Mild Steel components to make heads or tails of the individual parts. This is where the Color Override comes in. Make some parts different colors for visual determination. Take that a step further and assign mating faces like colors on a feature or face level to illustrate the surface treatment or interaction better for collaborative designers. Here we have a bearing journal made of Stainless Steel with a Lavender (I'm thinking Spring) color override and a face override to show machining on a surface.
Now that we understand the importance of Color and Texture a little more, let's see how to create our own. These next steps assume you have Read/Write access to your Styles Library (next Inventomization topic). Access the Styles and Standards Editor on the Format pull down (IV2010 users will find this on the Manage Panel, Styles and Standards Tab). If you expand the Color section you will find all the colors available in the Color Override drop box commonly found on the Standard toolbar (Quick Access Toolbar for 2010). Selecting any material here will bring up the settings that make up the color style.
Now rather than talk about all of these here I have already put together a strong document on these settings which you can find here (Pay attention to the Surface Styles settings). It is important to understand the relationship between Colors found in the Style and Standards Editor and the Surface Styles found in Inventor Studio. Both of these editors utilize the same XML data in the Styles Library called Colors.xml. Changing either one will update the other. Inventor Studio grants extra control over the color style for rendering purposes where the Styles Editor is mainly for general purpose.
Creating new color styles is easy. Simply select New at the top of the Editor while on a color style closest to one you wish to create. Rename the color style and modify the settings. Now if you need a texture you simply cannot find in the existing Inventor program files try this source.
I use it all the time to find unique and robust textures for my designs. I also am an avid googler of information as well. If you type in a keyword search for the color or texture you are looking for you can select the images section on google to get some great samplings.
Make sure you put the new texture in the correct directory so Inventor can find it quickly when you hit that Choose button in the Editor. I have been asked over the years to provide sports team color styles, and even some practical joke ones in the past.
Another noteworthy customization here is to create multiple color styles for multiple directions of your material. For instance consider creating three wood color styles but with different alignments for different orientations of the wood grain. An easy way to accomplish this is to have multiple color styles and change their rotation. But the slicker way is to create three individual texture files and name them with &X, &Y, and &Z at the end of the name before the extension. When created in the Editor, create the three color styles and assign them the corresponding texture file. This will align them with the axis in their name. Here you can see Wood Pine aligned to the Y (left) and X axes.
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Let's first understand how color interacts in the environment of Inventor. Color and Texture is assigned first and foremost by the physical properties in the model's iProperties. This can be overridden with model's color wheel, and individual faces and features can be overridden by their properties. Here you see the order of override from greatest control to basic control.
