Novedge Pulse™ of Mark Flayler

No, not for your Subscription Purchase Order for the new software, I'm talking the Bill of Material for your Inventor Assemblies. In Inventor 2014, Autodesk did a good job of cleaning up the Assemble Tab in the IAM evironment to make the process for new and experienced users easy to get around in... but I think they really messed something up here. Where is the Bill of Material command???? Well, its not gone, but its not as easy to get to as it was before either. The command was moved from the Assemble Tab to the Manage Tab with Assembly [more...]

Its that time of year again, the birds are chirping, the bees are buzzing, and Autodesk is busy releasing new software. If you haven't already checked it out, its probably in your Subscription Center waiting for your eager downloading to begin. Word to the wise, its in there with Autodesk as a prefix now and not just the product name so don't be afraid to scroll down if you are looking for a particular product. In this post we will take a look at what has changed in the Product Design Suite as far as Suite composition and what it [more...]

When it comes to working on a computer, we all tend to be a little lax in keep our hard drive clean and organized. One of the best ways to maintain your local workspace is to use the “Close files and delete working copies” option as you are checking in files. This option will delete all files from your local workspace after a successful check in. If you do not use this tool your local workspace can become bloated and disorganized. Also after time passes, we do not remember the status of files and are afraid to delete anything so [more...]

Many manufactures have clients that require their machinery to be updated from time to time or they may want a set of prints for a machine that was shipped in months or years past. This requires the manufacturer to maintain a complete "as shipped" set of files for the client's machine. This can be a nightmare with a Windows based achieve systems with the final "as shipped" files being copied out to a protected folder and the copying of parts out to other folders for use in other projects. In an Inventor assembly, if this copy is not done correctly [more...]

I have always wanted to be able to select model parameters using the sketch dimension heads up display but just could not come up with a way to have the selection arrow show up. I am looking for the little arrow you see in every edit dimension box indicated by the red arrow. One of our Application Experts, Anthony Dull, gave me a quick solution. When the desired Heads Up Display box is showing press the "=" key and voila, the familar selection arrow appears. The "=" mark is perfect since it does not interfere with any value entered. The [more...]

I often hear Inventor users say they are disappointed that during the creation of a circular pattern, they cannot prevent the feature from being rotated as it is patterned. This is true if you use the standard Circular Pattern tool as shown in the model below. The first image is of the part and the rectangular feature that will be patterned. The second image is the result of using the Inventor Circular Pattern tool and a fitted 6 placement feature. There is no option to prevent the rotation of the feature during this operation. There is another method to use [more...]

This tip comes from one of our clients in the Cleveland area (thanks go to Mark Gross). The Accel Group repeatidly does a wrap of thin material around their designs to the point where there is really no deformation in the design. Think a laminate wrap on a curved desk or countertop. In order to facilitate their design and production drawings they needed something to flatten from a curve without deforming. Immediately the Bend Part command is out, they don't want to use iParts, so lets use Sheet Metal! Traditional Sheet Metal deformations use a value, equation, or bend table [more...]

In case you missed it, and you rarely should, I made a couple appearances in AUGI World the past two months. February - rehash of one of my AU classes for Inventor beginners March - Hot Tips for Inventor (collection of some of my favorite from the blog) As a reminder, AUGI changed their membership levels. In order to receive the magazine in the mail you need to be a paid member. Otherwise use a free login and start viewing the magazine for free online [more...]

This is one of my favorite things to show users when they are telling me about slow down or complaining that they do not have enough memory for their machines. Autodesk Inventor installs a free utility called memprobe.exe with your installation which allows you to the loaded memory of your computer and by default the Inventor program. It goes a little more in depth than a simple Task Manager CTRL+ALT+DEL manuver and can really help you push management to get you either a new computer or at the very least some more RAM. Let's face it the secretary doesn't need [more...]

This is a follow up post to my discussion about geometry enclosed text in Autodesk Inventor drawings. I had a user that was reading that post and tried to do some modification to their Revision Tags in a slightly similar manner but was running into difficulty. Their problem stemmed from having a smaller font size for their drafting standard compared to the out of the box sizing. They also wanted a different symbol than that of the defaults in Inventor. When I started looking into the problem I noticed a large differentiator in Revision Tags as compared to Balloons. There [more...]

Springs, usually a subject I bounce around in a class. (Pause here for the groan of the reader). So many ways to create and show springs in an assembly. The method of use really depends on the intent of the user. Do you need to show compression and expansion? Do you just want a part representing the spring in a current rest state? Do you want to design your spring with known values? Do you want your spring to simulate motion of other parts of your assembly? Do you not use springs at all but this topic seemed interesting to [more...]

Score one for the Geek dad on this one. A while ago I posted some Autodesk/LEGO collaboration with Inventor Publisher. Won't be long now until there is a nice app that contains all the instructions my kids have lost over the years and makes it easier for those with poor depth perception or spatial understanding to enjoy Lego's more. From Autodesk's Press Release... COPENHAGEN, Denmark - LEGO World, February 14, 2013 — Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK), a leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software, has partnered with The LEGO Group to provide 3D interactive building instructions for LEGO MINDSTORMS [more...]

Inventor parameters control the shape and size of all part and assembly models. Parameters are added automatically every time you add a dimension to the model but they are not intelligently named. Inventor places the familiar d1, d2 … variable on the dimensions as they are placed. This leads to confusion if you are trying to reuse previous parameter values in newly created dimensions especially as the complexity of the model increases. In order to make the parameters more meaningful, they are often named to describewhat each parameter controls. A note here about renaming parameters, they cannot contain spaces or [more...]

When modeling in Inventor, you often have a feature that you would like to copy to another location on the same part or even to a totally different part. One of the basic rules to follow when modeling in Inventor is to keep all features separate. This will give you maximum flexibility if and when you need to edit a feature or redefine it. There are always exceptions but it is generally a very good rule to follow. My model is a very simple block with two features placed on one face, a through hole (extrusion) and a rectangular cutout [more...]

I had some good feedback from my post on Detail Attachment so I figured I would show another topic that I see a lot of users misstep on when they are learning Inventor. I have even caught users that were using for over a year missing this crucial step in their section view creations. Given our part here we want to see a sectional view inside this guy for proper dimensioning. So we begin with our standard views we want in our drawing and leave room for our section view placement. Now when you initially start the section view command [more...]

Here is a quick tip for Inventor Factory Users for using iMates in their layouts. In front of the tech tip is a great dataset done by our very own Rusty Belcher showcasing some of the great visualization tools included in the Suite in the Navisworks software [more...]

If the Grammies, Oscars, SAG, Nickalodeon Kids Choice, New Mountain Dew Flavor contests and awards shows have you bummed about nontechnical cool things to vote on and root for, then I have your solution. The Inventor of Year award for 2012 voting has opened and is entirely chosen by the user community. No stuffed shirts allowed. Vote for who you think is the most innovative company and is putting their software to use in the best way. The Autodesk Inventor of the Month program identifies the most innovative among hundreds of thousands of designers and engineers that invent with Autodesk [more...]

Just a quick update on our AutoCAD Electrical blog. I have some big plans for this blog. With a minimum post goal of 52 blog posts this year. I will try to monitor the comments as best as I can. Feel free to request future topics. The first few weeks of January I focused on the Title Block Update utility. AutoCAD Electrical's Title Block Update - The Basics AutoCAD Electrical's Title Block Update - Mapping Project Wide Revisions AutoCAD Electrical's Title Block Update - Previous / Next Sheet Numbers Updating All Drawing Settings (Descriptions) Using Excel Title Block Update - [more...]

I'm sure this has happended to you at one point or another when documenting with Autodesk Inventor. You start placing Base and Projected views and then maybe a Section, the occasional Auxillary View, and then your Detail views. Design changes happen, documents update, somewhere its 5:00 and someone is enjoying a nice refreshing after work beverage, but not you, you have to fix those Detail views that didn't move with your geometry when the design updated and changed. So how do we get out of work sooner and with less headaches next time? By attaching our Detail views, thats how [more...]

Merry Christmas to all of our readers out there! This Christmas card comes from our very own Rusty Belcher. He used Autodesk 123D Catch (mobile app) and Autodesk Showcase to make this amazing e-card [more...]

A little over a year ago, the Autodesk labs team released Project Falcon for Autodesk Alias (comes in the Product Design Suite Ultimate). They recentely overhauled the completely free Falcon solver to run as a standalone application on Windows and Mac as well as inside Inventor 2013. Immediately I found a project to try this out on; my son's cub scout pinewood derby car we are working on. This has helped him visualize the airflow around the car so we can look at possible changes in form after this digital prototype. There are plenty of videos up at the Labs [more...]

Inventor 2013 introduced a new way of working with materials that has been met with some criticism. Mostly due to the fact that you need SP1.1 to really start using them effectively in a group dynamic, but also that users with an IT staff with the idea that an upgrade is as simple as install and uninstall run into problems when they don't properly migrate the color styles to the new appearance libraries. Say what you want about the new material settings in Inventor, but this tool for adjustment is really handy. So lets frame a common problem, here we [more...]

Guest Blog by Rusty Belcher, manufacturing applications engineer with IMAGINiT Technologies: If you have ever submitted a class for Autodesk University, chances are, like me, you know the bitter feeling of rejection. Each year I get pumped up and think to myself that there's no way Autodesk is going to reject this topic, and every year I am crushed when I get the notice that my topic didn't make the cut. I mean come on! Who doesn't want to learn the extra stuff available when you type in -purge on the command line? I always feel like Charlie Brown trying [more...]

Its that time of year again, birds are heading south, leaves are getting raked, my wife is burning baked goods, and prepping for Autodesk University. This will be my fifth year speaking at the conference but this time I've scaled back. Last year I presented 5 classes, 6 the year before that. This year I am only doing one so I can focus more on the sheer awesomeness that is at the event. There is sure to be surprises, announcements, and humorous stories to orate for months to come after the show. As always I will be doing a heavy [more...]

Sometimes when you are presented with a task it may seem like a tedious endeavor to complete. Let's take the following example... Here's an IGES file from our client... Here's a block... Assembly them in our welder and create a nesting for the IGES in the block... If you know the right tools, this is a pretty easy task though. What we are going to do here is use Copy Object inside the assembly while in Part Edit mode to allow us to reuse geomtry from the assembly as well maintain an associative link to the geometry in case it [more...]

Autodesk has announced that it has aqquired HSMWorks. HSMWorks is a software company based in Copenhagen, Denmark that has made its name as the CAM Solution for...wait for it...Solidworks(?!?). I assume that the type of integration that made HSMWorks a hit with Solidworks users will soon be availabe to Inventor users as well. And, according to the press release, existing Solidworks users "will continue to receive support and product updates". How soon will Inventor users see CAM integration? Hard to say, but I would not be surprised to see some integration in the near future. Cfun [more...]

The next BIG I.D.E.A.S. event showcases the industry's best design tools and techniques to Gain Competitive Advantage and Deliver Better Designs Faster. Sessions include overviews of the evolving simulation space, current trends, best practices and technology options to better manage projects and steps to getting your simulation solution off the ground. Hear from IMAGINiT experts and guest speakers on the importance of performing simulations early in the design and engineering process to investigate behavior, test innovative concepts, and optimize designs before manufacturing. With simulation-driven design, designers and engineers can understand the implications of design choices as they make them. Join [more...]

I'm just going to give you a heads up on this one, its not a topic I run into that often, this tip is for the niche type of user that wants to build configurated iAssembly tables while also using Inventor's Tube and Pipe module for Routed Systems. Strap on your modeling cap, this will get heavy on the vocab. If you have not used Tube and Pipe or iAssemblies, might be a good time to smile and nod but soak in the concept here. Your configurated design may call for a master runs assembly to adapt to different assembly [more...]

I love the forms in Inventor 2012 and up. In fact I try to find a use for them whenever I can. One of the more recurring uses I have done for clients is a Form in the drawing environment. Recently I was asked to have a pick list in the form based on known customers the client works with. So I start with a new text user parameter in the drawing and I make it a Multi-Value list. Normally I would just slap that parameter right in there and call it a day. But wait, we want this to [more...]

Some of the new Visual aspects of the Inventor modeling engine include the ability to set a model reflection across a ground plane. Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn't match the way you modeling your part or assembly so we have to adjust it. Here we have a reflection image that is in the wrong position. We want it below this feeder assembly, not behind it. To resolve this, start by going to the View Tab --> Appearance Panel and select the flyout for either the Reflection or the Ground Plane. In either of these flyouts you will find a Settings button [more...]

Coming off my post about how you can actually use Navisworks in a Manufacturing or Factory Layout setting, I got a great question from reader. How can I put something more exciting in the program for an avatar? Well, you can actually take just about any 3Ds Max or OBJ file and put it in Navisworks as an avatar. You just have to import it, orient it correctly, save it as a NWD, and have it in the correct folder. Here are some samples for you to have some fun with. Download NWavatars I am particularly favorable to the Skeleton [more...]

I really annoyed a co-worker the other day. I saved my part model with the ever effective Watercolor Visual Style so when he opened up the document he was presented with a less than stellar style for his review. It has almost become a Rick-Rolling type of prank I play on the unsuspecting Inventor modeler. Now from time to time, I have found that this can cause some serious problems for those with less sophisticated graphics cards where it would actually cause a CTD (Crash to Desktop) due to the settings of that computer's hardware and video settings. So how [more...]