In a continuation from my previous post on creating a custom Tube & Pipe style I stepped through the required modelling steps to create a conduit for use in the Inventor Tube & Pipe environment. There are four primary steps to creating an entirely custom Tube & Pipe style:
- Modelling a custom part (conduits and/or fittings)
- Authoring a part as a Tube & Pipe component
- Publishing a part to the Content Center
- Creating the custom Tube & Pipe style
In this post I will step through authoring the previously modeled conduit so that it is ready to be added to a custom content center. With the model created we can now prepare the conduit to make it an intelligent Tube & Pipe part. As it sits now the flared conduit is simply a standard Inventor iPart with some extra work geometry.
With the conduit loaded, navigate to the Manage tab in Inventor and in the Author panel select the drop-down shown. (Depending on the last command used in this drop-down the displayed button may be different). From the drop-down list select Tube and Pipe.
The Tube & Pipe Authoring dialog box should appear. Since we are modelling a tube, in the type drop-down list select Tubes. This will preset some of the end treatment and parameter options that are required for the type selected.
Note: Three selections to create conduit are Hoses, Pipes and Tubes. In order to have these types included in the list for selection the conduit model needs to be an iPart.

The first thing to do is map the parameters to the user parameters in the model. In the parameter table select each cell in the Table Mapping column and choose a user parameter from the drop-down list. In my case the selections are:
- Nominal Size = NS (Critical for the tube and pipe style selection)
- Schedule Number = SN
- Inside Diameter = ID
- Outside Diameter = OD
- Pipe Length = PL

Don’t worry if you have unused user parameters. These can be added, if needed, when publishing the part to the content center.
Continuing with the authoring dialog box, most of the settings are applied per connection so to start configuring the first connection ensure that the Connection Number button 1 is depressed. Next select the End Treatment drop-down list and select Flared, or whichever treatment applies to your model.

In the Connection area of the authoring dialog box make the connection reference selections. These will indicate where the connection point is made when routing our line in the Tube & Pipe environment. With the Point selection button active select the appropriate work point from the model browser.

Once selected return to the authoring dialog box and click the Axis selection button to select the work axis. Be sure to select the work axis that corresponds to the same end of the tube as the work point just selected.

The arrow that is displayed after making the selection indicates the direction that a connection is made from when populating a tube and pipe route. This is not an indication of a flow direction. If the arrow is pointing inside the tube use the flip button in the authoring dialog box to point the arrow away from the tube end.
Once the connection selections have been made use the radio buttons to select the type of connection whether it will be male, female or neutral. Then to the right in the Engagement area you can indicate, for a male/female connection, how far the tube will engage in a connector by filling these values.

Since this flared tube is a neutral connection these values can be zero.
The connection properties for the first port have been set and to verify this is indicated in the authoring dialog box by the Connection Number button showing a black number 1. To finish authoring this part depress the 2nd connection number button and repeat the settings and selections for the opposite end of the tube.

Note: The ISOGEN area of the authoring dialog box can be used when creating a PCF output of a Tube & Pipe run. This is not a common workflow and these fields can be left empty.
When the connections have been fully defined click OK and save the part which is now ready for publishing to the content center.
-DP