Autodesk University 08

I had a chance to do something I have wanted to do for years, and that is ride the motorcycle to AU. It's always been a hit or miss kind of thing, bad weather mostly. But this year the weather was perfect both ways. There was the usual stuff - classes - always fun for us Inventor folk. And a chance to see old friends. U.S.CAD again had a booth in the exhibit hall, but this year with a twist, we had Lynn Allen in the booth all evening during the AUGI beer bash.




I know you were expecting some kind of insight into the next "BIG" thing announced at AU. But this year there were so many next big things it's hard to know where to begin. Probably the 'coolest' thing was the Touch Screen Inventor model, lots of fun to play with. As usual classes for everyone and every level, several U.S. CAD personnel were presenters. Mark the date for next years event first week after Thanksgiving at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas - you should go.

Also, keep an eye on this space as there will be several posts coming up announcing U.S. CAD events; SCCS '09, and what's new in Inventor / ACAD-E events.

Autodesk Showcase

As some of you may know, U.S.CAD is now authorized as a reseller for Autodesk Alias Studio, and Autodesk Alias Showcase. Over this past weekend I had a chance to explore Showcase, and 'Wow' this is a great tool. Ask your marketing folks how they get images for brochures, the website, etc. Get us involved and take a look at showcase.

I built a fairly simple model in Inventor, and then opened Showcase, and imported the model directly in (didn't have to save it as some strange format). Everything came in perfectly.

In Showcase I was able to apply different materials (and colors) to specific parts of the model. I was able to change the lighting, spin around and change materials at the same time. I was able to reposition different parts of the model. And all of the time this looks like a photo-realistic image, no delay, no re-render. Phenomenal.

More soon, as I get a little better at this.

busy times for manufacturing solutions

For us, it's been a very busy couple of months. First we had several custom training classes. Then we had the Southern California Cad Summit (SCCS - like a one-day Autodesk University), and thanks to all of you who made the trip to San Diego we appreciate the effort. It was a fun day, the weather was fabulous, ate breakfast on the patio of the Convention Center, overlooking the San Diego harbor. I presented 4 classes this year (Frame Generator, Large Assembly Management, Vault, and Interoperability) - whew!

If you read one of my posts earlier this year I said keep your eye on interoperability, boy was that prophetic. Autodesk has a number of people dedicated to just that - making products talk to one another (apparently it is not as easy as we all could hope for). But for those of you interested, there is a lot going on and we should be hearing more on this subject soon.

Now we are poised to do AUGI's version Cad Camp. Same deal different logo.

And then, of course there is the ever present flow of new tools from Autodesk to look at, explore, test..... I will spend more time on these soon, but I have spent some time with a couple of new products from the Autodesk stable - PortfolioWall, and SketchbookPro - both very cool, fun tools with a totally hot interface.

come back soon - and feel free to make suggestions on future topics.

thanks, tod.wallace@uscad.com

Recently, I was asked how to create a parts list for just the items on the screen. What was on the drawing was a design view of an assembly. Since I had not had a chance to talk about that in a while I thought I might take this opportunity.

First, we ballooned the view. Then placed the parts list, and of course the parts list contains all the parts in the assembly. Now comes the fun part, right-click on the parts list and select 'Edit Parts List' from the pop-up menu. In the dialog box that shows up click on the 'Filter Settings' button. In the 'Define Filter' window select the drop-down and from the list select 'Ballooned Items Only'.

If you are skipping the balloons, it is the same process just select 'Assembly View Representation' from the drop down menu.

More about Bill of Materials in the near future.....

The VIEW Cube

"What is it? Up in the sky? Is it the BORG?" No it is the new View cube.



If you have used Design Review or the DWF viewer you already know what it is, but it is making it's debut in Inventor 2009. Thats the good news (and there is more), the bad news is the demise of the 'glass box'.





The view cube will be a welcome addition to Inventor, with enough options to make all but the crustiest of users happy. You can click on the faces, and the model will re-orient to that view. You can also click on the corners for isometric views, on the edges for two face views. As you get close to the View cube a little house will appear, thats home, and will take you to the default isometric view. When you right-click on the View cube is when the real power starts to show, you can establish a new front view, establish a new 'home' view, change from orthographic view to perspective view. If you go into the options menu, you can change the location of the View cube, change it's opacity, you can even add a compass to the bottom of the cube.





Last, but certainly not least is..... put your cursor over the view cube, hold down the left mouse button and start to move, and the view cube becomes a 3D orbit tool.





This is certainly a thumbs up tool for Inventor 2009.

Inventor Bootcamp

Well, we just got back from the Big D - Dallas, Texas. Inventor Bootcamp was held in dallas last week, and despite the fact that it was grueling, there was also time for some fun.

The underlying story, if you were listening closely, was interoperability. Pay attention, you will hear more and more about interoperability in the near future. Of course, we all know about bringing AutoCAD data into the Inventor environment, and we know that in 2008 they offered us the DWG file format as an option for creating drawings. But what I think we are going to hear more of is other Autodesk products interacting with Inventor, and Inventor interacting with other products. Putting your Inventor models into Revit, etc.

Stay tuned.

Inventor 2009 Part II

Let's start at the beginning. Sketches. Some very nice features were added to the sketch environment, and I will get to part of them here.

Degrees of Freedom; you can highlight a sketch, then right-click and select Degrees of Freedom.

The red (in this color scheme) arrows indicate that you can move the item (in this case, lines and vertices) in the direction(s) indicated. And, of course you will have curved arrows for angles, etc.

Thumbs Up; Just a nice little touch to make it easier to understand how to completely constrain a sketch.

Inventor User Survey

I am in the process of creating a very detailed survey, delivered in parts, relating to the usage of Inventor. This is strictly for U.S. CAD and it's designed to help us deliver bettter training, better blogs, etc.

So my question is do you think this is a good idea? Let me know - tod.wallace@uscad.com

Inventor 2009

So far I have only had a chance to take Inventor on a short trip around the harbor, and here are some personal observations.

I really like the new release, the people at Autodesk have done a good job (all-in-all), providing something for everyone. And I do mean everyone, there are things in there for the new user, to help them create better sketches, and things for the verterans and power users.

THUMBS (HOOKS) DOWN: the steering wheel has been implemented into Inventor. Some of you may be familiar with the 'steering wheel' from Design Review. But, to me, that little thing following you around, even in 'reduced footprint' mode is enough to make even the heartiest of souls paranoid.

THUMBS UP: here are couple of initial impressions. And more to come. First up; the ViewCube, a nice subtle addition to the interface. The ViewCube lets you pick a face, a corner, an edge, and your model re-orients based on your selection on the ViewCube. You can drag on the ViewCube and the model will re-orient (almost like orbit). You can right-click on the ViewCube (remember: right-click on everything) and a pop-up menu will appear, allowing you to create a new home view, a new front view, or change from orthographic to perspective. Next, and there will be more on this later, one of my real favorites, the ability to publish to the Frame Generator, and the bonus is that it can be done very easily.

More Soon !!!

Inventor 2009

Well, the new Inventor is shipping. Keep checking back with all our blogs and find out what's hot.... and what's not. The U.S. CAD Mechanical team will be posting out favorite and not so favorite features of the new release as we take the product on a shake down cruise.

Frame Generator Quantities in Parts List

You created an assembly containing frames inserted with the Frame Generator.
You then created the assembly views and now you want to know how to display the quantities of different length frames in the Parts List rows (see image below).








To display frame quantities in the Parts List
1. In the Bill of Materials, click the Model Data tab.
2. On the Model Data tab, expand the Frame subassembly tree.
3. Select all the frame rows (select the first row, press and hold Shift, and then select the last row).
4. Under the Base QTY column, in one of the frame cells, click the arrow on the right.
5. In the dialog box, expand the Standard Quantity tree, select Each, and then click OK.
6. Verify that “Each” is listed in the Frame cells under the Base QTY column.
7. In the drawing file, insert the Parts List.
8. Edit the Parts List.
9. In the Column Chooser dialog box, click New Property. Create the G_L property. The new property is automatically added to the Selected Properties list.
10. Add the Standard and Stock Number properties.
11. Remove the properties that correspond to the columns you do not want display. Click OK.
12. In the Parts List dialog box, click Group Settings.
13. In the Group Settings dialog box, select the Group check box and set the G_L property as the first key.
14. Clear the Display Group Participants check box. Click OK.
15. In the Parts List dialog box, select the G_L column, and then right-click. On the shortcut menu, click Format Column.
16. In the Format Column dialog box, click the Column Format tab.
17. On the Column Format tab, enter a descriptive name in the Heading field, such as "Frame Length."
18. Click OK to close each dialog box.

Inventor Class

I just finished conducting an Inventor Essentials Class. And as we all know you could go 10 days and not cover all the information. We at U.S.CAD are thinking about changing the way we teach Inventor.

With that in mind, and looking at the progression Inventor has made we are going to five (5) days. This will give us more time to work on several things (sketching, unique modeling situations, etc.), and let us address in more depth other topics we have either glossed over, or not covered completely.

Let us know what you think. More details soon.

Style Conflict

Style Conflict When Creating a New Drawing
If your project Use Style Library project setting is set to Yes or Read only, you may see this error when you create a new drawing from your template.

Essentially, what happens is when you start a new drawing, Inventor compares style definitions in your drawing template with the style definitions in your active style library. If Inventor finds a style definition in both locations that share the same name, but have different settings applied, this warning dialog appears and the definition from the library overwrites the local definition in your template.
This condition frequently occurs when moving from an older Inventor release to a newer one where you may have migrated your template files, but for whatever reason, have not yet migrated your style library.

There are three ways to prevent this conflict warning from appearing:
1 – Change your Use Style Library project setting to No. This is quick-and-easy, but of course, you’d be sacrificing the tools and options afforded by using the style library.

2 – OPEN your template file (don’t start a new file) and overwrite the style definitions from your library into your template file by selecting Format > Update Styles…

3 – OPEN your template file (don’t start a new file) and overwrite the style definitions from your template file into your style library by selecting Format > Save Styles to Style Library… (note that your Use Style Library Project setting must be set to Yes to execute this command).