It’s been a few weeks since my last post on creating a custom Tube & Pipe style. In the first two posts on the topic I demonstrated how to model a custom part for use in a tube and pipe style and then how to author that part so Inventor understands it as a tube and pipe component. There are four steps to creating a custom Tube & Pipe style using custom parts:
- 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 we will see how to publish an authored part to the content center. Any custom tube and pipe component that is needed for a style in the tube and pipe environment is required to be saved to the content center.
There are a few things that need to be in place before a part can be published to the content center. There must be a custom content center library defined in your Inventor project file. You can see this from inside the project file dialog box. Recall that the pre-installed content center libraries are all read-only. Additionally, if you are using Autodesk Vault you must be sure that your user login has the appropriate roles and permissions to author parts to the content center.
To continue on with the publish step, we will use the flared tube I authored in my previous post.
FIrst, navigate to the Manage tab in Inventor with the tube part open and select Publish Part.
The Publish Guide dialog box appears and begins the process for publishing a part to the content center. In the first page of the guide select the custom library that contains all of your organization’s custom parts and your preferred language. These will be pre-selected with your custom library and computer's language setting.
If you have authored the part correctly all of the default settings in the next two pages of the guide should also be pre-entered. Verify that the selections are correct and continue through the guide.
Note: the yellow rows in the parameter mapping dialog box above indicate required parameters. The required parameters rows are determined by the category selection in the previous dialog box. You will not be able to proceed without filling in values in the yellow rows. The white rows are optional.
In the next dialog box, select the key columns. These columns will be used any time this part is placed manually in an assembly using the Place from Content Center button.
In the family properties dialog box you need to set the Family Name, Family Description and the Family Folder Name. The name and description fields are viewed from the content center browser when selecting parts for placement and the family folder is the name of the sub-folder that will store the IPT files once created. The remaining fields at the bottom are beneficial for filtering content, when selecting components, but are not required to proceed.
Click Next to move to the publish page. If you have done everything correctly the next dialog box should display a thumbnail of the part and the publish button. Clicking Publish will add the part and family to your content center.
Once complete you can verify that the part is added to the content center by starting the content center editor.
That's all there is to it. This step of the process in creating an entirely custom tube and pipe style is the shortest. If the part has been modeled and authored correctly most of the information required for the publish operation will be pre-filled in the publish guide.
In the next step we will enter the Tube & Pipe environment within Inventor and create a new piping style using this new tube we created.
-DP
