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.