IMAGINiT Manufacturing Solutions Blog

Those Constraints Are Persistent Aren't They?

Inventor 2009+ included a couple new sketching constraint suppression tools that have been giving some users a hard time. Constraints are normally applied as you sketch. This process involves the inference and persistence of the constraints. The use of these commands allows users to turn off this functionality and was originally requested by advanced users. This has come up enough in questions and troubleshooting for new or casual users enough that I wanted to take some time and discuss it here.

Inference On - Persistence On

Geometry is created normally with constraint glyphs, tracking, and geometric constraint creation based on options set in the constraint options dialog. The constraint options dialog is activated by right clicking in your sketch and selecting it. The options there should be for all the constraints you want created automatically.

Inference On - Persistence Off

Geometry is created with the aid of constraint glyphs and tracking but geometric constraints are not added with the exception of the Coincident constraint which still has to be turned off manually in the constraint options dialog. This is done to help ensure open profile sketches do not inadvertently get created.

Inference Off - Persistence Off

Sketching is free form and no constraint glyphs, tracking or geometric controls are added to the sketch. You might as well be in AutoCAD. Again the only constraint that is maintained here is the coincident to help avoid open loop sketches.

Leave them on - If you like the idea of the option of not creating certain types of constraints during sketching you can still use a shortcut key to temporarily disable them. While you are sketching hold the CTRL key and it will not add the geometric constraint while sketching your selections. Coincident will still work no matter what.

Remove them - Consider moving these two items to your expanded panel so that you do not inadvertently create a problem for yourself. If you are using 2009 or are still in denial in 2010 using the Classic UI you could remove them from your standard toolbar, but it becomes more difficult to troubleshoot problems when you do this.

Until next time, may your constraints be persistent.

Inventor Training Addendum: Placing Features on Cylindrical Shapes

Occasionally I get requests for streamlined training material that is not that are not part of our normal training program. This one comes from Introduction to Solid Modeling students wanting to do more with cylindrical features but not finding their obvious choice in the feature commands. This paper will streamline the different work flows discussed in our intro training classes.

Download: Placing Features On Cylindrical Shapes

Excerpt:

The adoption of parametric, feature?based solid modeling will present many challenges to the new user as they are confronted for the first time with "thinking in 3D." Some feature creation techniques will come naturally to the users; others will not be so intuitive. One of the first hurdles a user may face, and one of the most common questions in training classes, is that of locating sketched features properly on a curving or cylindrical surface. This whitepaper will address the conceptual thought and techniques necessary to properly place features as desired in these modeling scenarios. Specifically, we will look at placing Holes, sketched Embossed or Engraved features, and Decals.

You can learn more about this command and more in one of our Inventor training classes or Manufacturing webcasts:

Until next time, may your feature curve on the right surface!

Related Documents:

National Training URL: http://training.engineering.com/

Inventor Intro to Modeling Outline

Inventor Advanced Part Modeling Outline

The Autodesk Toxic Avenger

Ok, so it is not an old campy 80's movie like the heading implies. What this is about is the fact that I got a lot of great feedback from users about the AIT2010 Material database, but a lot of questions too. One of the most prominent was how to track toxicity and sustainability of existing materials that may not be plastic based. I think Autodesk was reading my blog too close and decided to update their Labs Sustainable Materials Assistant for the 2010 release.

Download Sustainable Materials Assistant User Guide for 2010

The Sustainable Materials Assistant was first introduced about two years ago on Earth day and then kind of forgotten about. Just the other day they finally updated the documents and code for Inventor 2010 and 2009.

The process is rather simple to setup the Materials Assistant and requires little maintenance after initial inception and most of the required information is information your company may negotiate in your designs everyday.

Create a new Toxic Material: Create a simple new material in the Styles and Standards editor and save them to your template or styles library.

Assign Sustainable Material Qualities: This includes Toxicity, Carbon Footprint, Recycling, and Regulatory information. This can range from anything from a standards process, web links, material data sheets, and names of forms to fill out.

Share data with all users: Locate the sustainable materials.xml from your Design Data folder and make sure others users have it if not already by use of your network.

Analyze Assemblies: Analyze all your parts in your design at once and compare similar designs.

Run Reports: Create a report at which ever level of assembly or at part level of the material properties and save it to a HTML report.

To get you started with this I created a simple steel drum and contained it with Toxic Goo. Here are the files for your experimentation, or placement in your evil scientist assembly files. Sometime in the future I will show you how to fill the drum in Studio and get volume calculations off it rather quickly.

Toxic Goo Files.zip

Until next time, may your materials be recyclable!

Inventor Tooling Capabilities and Materials

Today we look at two whitepapers brought to us by our newest member to our mechanical team, Matt Jaworski. Matt hails from a secret bunker located in Erie, PA and he provides training, support and implementation on Autodesk manufacturing and data management solutions software. He has extensive experience in the computer software and plastics industries working as a tech support engineer, trainer, design engineer and solutions specialist. He has also adjunct lectured at Penn State University and the University of Massachusetts - Lowell.

The first paper describes the Autodesk Inventor Tooling ability to obtain a suitable material for the Plastic Analysis and Tooling creation for Plastic Parts.

Download: AIT2010 Material Searching Tips

Excerpt:

One of the beginning steps in using Autodesk Inventor Tooling is searching for and selecting an appropriate plastic material for your part's particular application. This is an important step as different materials will process and behave very differently from one another, which will in turn effect how the injection mold is designed and constructed. You may have an idea of what general material family you may want to consider or a specific resin that you want to select. In either case, read on for some tips to help you quickly select your intended plastic material for AIT.

The second is a nice overview of the features available in the Tooling package as well as the Autodesk Moldflow line of Plastic design tools.

Download: ADSK 2010 Plastic Simulation Capabilities Matrix

Thanks again Matt for putting together these great papers on the plastic capabilites in Inventor and Moldflow.

Placing Component Productivity

Now I know some 2009 users got a little jealous that I showed one of my favorite new things in 2010 with the Direct Parameter creation, but here are some tips for both 2009 and 2010. If you are still using 2008 only the option noted below does not work in 2008.

First a little clarification for those having trouble with the terms Component and Part inside assembly files:

Part = any old standard plain jane Part (IPT)

Component = any Part (IPT) or subassembly (IAM) that is comprised inside an Assembly

Changing your Selection Filter to Part Priority allows the user to select any Part whether it is at the top or subassembly level. Choosing Component Priority allows the user to only select with the onscreen graphics items that are at the current level of the active assembly.

Placing Multiple Components at once

Often times I hear gripes that users do not want to drag and drop from Windows Explorer or have to continually go back and forth with the Place Component command to place a series of already generated parts into their assembly file. Well here is a faster way to accomplish just that.

1. Start a blank assembly and start either the Place Component or Place from Vault command.
2. Use Shift or Ctrl selection to grab all the components you want to put into the assembly.
3. The last component selected in this manner will become your Base component that is grounded to the assembly origin. (Tip, consider ALWAYS placing the base component explicitly so that you don't inadvertently place the wrong component at the origin)

Placing Multiple Occurrences of a Component

Okay Mark, that was pretty awesome, but what if I want more than one occurrence of a part and I don't want to have to go back and forth with that dialog box or Windows Explorer again? This is even easier. Once you have an item placed in your assembly simply find it in your model browser and drag and drop it into your graphics window.

Whoa, very awesome Mark, but what if I want that occurrence in the same orientation as the already placed occurrence? When I first constrained it, it took me a little bit to get it situated the way I wanted. Another good point my friends. In 2009 there was an Application Option included entitled Use Last Occurrence Orientation for Component Placement. This will place the newly dropped occurrence into the assembly in the same orientation at which the previous occurrence was constrained. If that last occurrence was deleted then it will use the occurrence previous to that one.

Until next time, may your components be oriented in the right direction!