In this Tech Tip, I wanted to continue discussion on the Autodesk Inventor Plastic Part Design tools. These tools as you recall are mysteriously powerful and need more exposure. The focus on this post is the Rule Fillet command which I use quite a bit actually even though I make more metal parts than I do plastics. Remember this though, the first rule about Rule Fillet is you do not talk about Rule Fillet. Well unless you are awesome, then yes talk about Rule Fillet with your colleagues and make your design for change intent that much more epic. The second rule of Rule Fillet is to enter the basement of commands that is in your Ribbon interface.
So what is the Rule Fillet all about? Well it basically is a more advanced way to select edges and other modeling entities for use in rounds and fillets for your design. As an example, here is the grill from our last blog post and we have used the Feature Selection to grab all the edges of the Grill. Notice something off? It stopped at 100 edges and did not get all the ones we wanted because of that. So what's a designer to do at this point? You guessed it, put on a pot of coffee and your good reading glasses and start picking edges and loops instead to add to your set. Oh and be careful not to grab too much or not enough or you might have to start again. Many a new curse word have been invented from such annoying tasks.
Enter the Rule Fillet Command and viola! Easy selection for even your toughest selection sets. In this tool you can use rules for adjoining features, free edges, all edges, incident edges, and even all edges that only hit against the part. This makes short work of your grill selection and anything else that has a plethora of edges to pick for filleting in your design.
Now, lets not just stop at plastics, just because the tool is in there doesn't mean that is only application we have for this tool. Consider for a moment how many fillets you have when dealing with Castings? How about iParts or iLogic designs where shape changes occur and the fillet selection has to change as well? We can use Rule Fillet for smarter feature history tree manipulations and aid in maintaining design for change in our work.
Now there is a downside. Rule three of Rule Fillet is don't be let down by failure. You are trading off selection speed for error reporting. The traditional fillet command will tell you which fillets will fail and allow at least some of the fillets to be created. Rule Fillet is all or nothing going to work or not, just like the standard fillet command used to work. In the end, if you follow these rules and as long as you are not Edward Norton you won't beat yourself up like some "other" clubs and their rules.
Watch this video for more goodness and try it out with the sample files below.