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The Gear Box is the official blog of Jay Tedeschi, the MSD Sr. Solutions Evangelist. Jay will discuss a wide array of topics, including software interoperability, applicability, and hardware/software developments.
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SurveyMonkey strikes again...
August 29, 2008 08:05 PMby Jay TedeschiOkay gang... here is another chance to have your voice heard... well, maybe not voice, but definitely opinion. In any case, for a while now Autodesk's Manufacturing Division has been providing Digital Prototyping tools that facilitate key phases of the manufacturing process. To help us further tailor our products to your manufacturing needs we would like to better understand how assembly instructions, maintenance/repair manuals and manufacturing documents are created and used in your organization.
Please take a moment to participate in a quick 10 minute questionnaire by clicking on this link. Upon completion of the survey you will be entered into a drawing to win one of 3 $100 Amazon.com gift certificates!
Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you!
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UI Tech Preview... Rule Of Thumb
August 27, 2008 12:07 PMby Jay TedeschiNot sure how many of you out there have been using the UI Tech Preview for Inventor 2009… it has been available up on ‘Labs now for a couple of months. In any case I just thought I would pass along a useful Rule of Thumb for living with the new Navigation Bar.
For those of you who don’t already know this, that vertical toolbar to the left of my browser is called the Navigation Bar. It is end user customizable with regard to content, and is in my opinion one of the most useful changes to the Inventor environment introduced by the Tech Preview. However, there is a small behavioral anomaly I have observed that you might have as well, that if not recognized has the potential to send you into a browser induced rage… [grin].Take another look at the image above… my intent was to “Edit” the selected component via the right click menu. However, due to the fact that I have just finished using the Navigation Bar, and it is STILL HIGHLIGHTED, the menu that I get on a right click is NOT the one that will allow me to do much of anything at all. There have actually been times when I swear I was not even using the Nav Bar, I really just passed over it on my way into the browser, but it highlighted and BAM, I got the “slightly less useful” right click menu. [grin]In any case, a good rule of thumb if you have been using the Nav Bar is to click once on empty space in the edit window to clear the selection. If not, try and steer a path to the browser that does not involve crossing the Nav Bar. As long as it looks like the image below, and provided you have not made any changes to the default Nav Bar opacity settings, you should be good to go with regard to getting the “right” right click menu.
Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly, and children should avoid prolonged exposure to the Navigation Bar.Caution: Navigation Bar may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds. Navigation Bar contains a liquid core, which if exposed due to rupture should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at. Do not use Navigation Bar on concrete.Discontinue use of Navigation Bar if any of the following occurs:* Itching* Vertigo* Dizziness* Tingling in extremities* Loss of balance or coordination* Slurred speech* Temporary blindness* Profuse Sweatingor* Heart palpitationsIf Navigation bar begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head. Navigation Bar may stick to certain types of skin. When not in use, Navigation bar should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration. Ingredients of Navigation Bar include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.Finally, do not taunt Navigation Bar.0 Comment | Add CommentIn The Gear Box > Inventor 2009, Tips
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August 2008 BAMUG...
August 22, 2008 07:11 PMby Jay TedeschiThe Bay Area Manufacturing User Group will be holding it’s August 2008 meeting on Monday the 25th at the San Jose Hilton. This is a great opportunity to meet with other manufacturing users and discuss what is important to you.
An added bonus this year is free admission for the nvision expo with your registration. There will be three days and over 77 hours of technical sessions at the nvision expo, plus a Keynote hosted by NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, an exclusive screening of 3D Film "Fly Me to the Moon" with special appearance by Buzz Aldrin, and appearances by other special guests including immersive display scientist and one of Time Magazine?s 2008 100 most influential people Jeff Han, Jamie and Adam of MythBusters fame, NASCAR driver Kyle Busch, actress Tricia Helfer from Battlestar Galactica and NASA astronaut and space shuttle commander Eileen Collins.For all the info, head on over to here and register now.0 Comment | Add CommentIn The Gear Box > Links, Industry News
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You Must Adapt...
August 20, 2008 02:43 PMby Jay TedeschiAdaptivity is one of the pieces of core Inventor functionality that sets it apart from almost every other design system sold today, however it is also one of the least understood. Today I want to show you a little exercise in adaptivity, and in the process show you a perfect example of where it is best employed… for part level geometry changes based on assembly relationships. Consider the following example… a microphone attenuator.
I want to get a really tight fit between this and the microphone that it encloses, ideally a bit of an interference fit. So I am going to start by sketching the ID of the barrel and then adding a dimension to control it.
Once the dimension is added I need to highlight it and change it to a Driven Dimension. This has a couple of purposes, not the least of which is the ability to create documentation as early in the design process as possible. This driven dimension is also required for adaptive changes to the sketch diameter, which a fixed dimension would prevent. Once the extruded cylindrical feature is defined, I need to edit the properties for the extrusion.
Under the adaptive category I need only select “Sketch” as this is the only property of this feature that I will need to change adaptively. If I planned on changing both the extruded distance as well as the sketched diameter I would need to select “Parameters” here as well. For wholesale adaptivity changes I don’t really need to use the properties dialog box, I can simply select the feature from the browser, right click and set adaptivity.
Now I am going to move over to the assembly and add the Attenuator component I just created. It will need to be constrained to the microphone, which is already grounded. The first thing I have to do to allow for adaptive geometry changes is to flag the part as being adaptive. This may seem counterintuitive, especially after the steps I took when modeling the part, however this one feature is what sets adaptivity apart from pure parametric geometry changes, and ultimately makes it arguably a much more useful tool… it can be turned on and off.
I will select the part from the browser, right click and then select “Adaptive”. That’s it and now I am ready to size my part.
From the Place Constraint dialog, with a Mate constraint active, I select the inside diameter of the Attenuator… it will initially select the cylindrical axis which is not what I need to change. Pause for a second and allow the “Select Other” indicator to pop up… pick once to cycle through the options and the interior cylindrical face will be highlighted.
I will select this and the exterior cylindrical face of the microphone, and then set the desired offset distance between these two faces to negative .001. This changes the inside diameter of the Attenuator to be one thousandth of an inch smaller than the outside diameter of the microphone, which should give me the interference fit I am looking for.
A brief query with the Interference Detection tool verifies this and we are good to go. Once this geometric relationship is established, adaptivity can be toggled on and off via the assembly browser.This type of modification is exactly what adaptivity was initially envisioned for, and is significantly more straightforward than any other method of assembly level, relational geometric changes. Try it the next time you are about to use a skeletal part or global parameter file.0 Comment | Add CommentIn The Gear Box > Inventor 2009, Inventor 2008, Tips
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"Is this Elaine Marie Benes...?"
August 8, 2008 04:33 PMby Jay TedeschiThe voice on the phone, which awakens Elaine in the middle of the night to confirm the spelling of her last name, identifies itself as the AMA… Well, if you live in southern California get ready for the AMA… no, not that one, this one is the Autodesk Manufacturing Academy.
Offered by Ketiv, the AMA will offer training from industry experts who work with AutoCAD and Inventor as a tool to address the design problems they encounter daily. This is a benefit to you, as their training is not merely book based, but rather grounded in their collective experiences… real world solutions for real world design problems.Registration is open until September 18, and you can find out more about the event by browsing over to Ketiv’s AMA page.0 Comment | Add CommentIn The Gear Box > Inventor 2008, Inventor 2009, Industry News
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Deja Vu all over again...
August 7, 2008 05:55 PMby Jay TedeschiHas anyone else noticed how much blog material has been devoted to ‘Labs applications lately?
Well, prepare to be dazzled yet again. If you head over to YouTube right now, Kevin Schneider, product manager with the Autodesk Manufacturing team lets us in on something big coming to Autodesk Labs very soon.I actually demonstrated an earlier version of this technology on mainstage at AU last year for 8000 or so of my closest friends. [grin] I wish I could tell you more, but for now I’ll leave you with this screen shot from the AU presentation.
So… head on over to YouTube now to see the message from Kevin, and keep your eyes open for a formal announcement soon on http://labs.autodesk.com/ .0 Comment | Add CommentIn The Gear Box > Inventor 2009, Industry News
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Advanced Simulation Technology Preview
August 6, 2008 03:18 PMby Jay TedeschiNew on ‘Labs this week… the Advanced Simulation Technology Preview. For users who are currently using Inventor Professional 2009 or Inventor Simulation Suite 2009 “ASTP” will enable you to directly read Inventor parts and assemblies and analyze them from a stress and modal frequency standpoint.
One of the biggest advantages of using the Advanced Simulation Technology Preview is the ability to optimize designs based on parametric model changes.
A design which exceeds the ultimate strength of the materials used may be driven through multiple iterations via model parameters until a version which meets the design requirements is found. In this example, the stresses in a support arm are brought to an acceptable level through the addition and sizing of a set of strengthening ribs.
Automatic mesh refinement and contact detection will get you up and on your way quickly and greatly simplify the process of setting up the simulation environment correctly. It’s a good thing! And it’s over at ‘Labs right now.Just browse to… http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/advanced_simulation/ .0 Comment | Add CommentIn The Gear Box > Inventor 2009, Industry News
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Positional Representations...
July 25, 2008 08:11 PMby Jay TedeschiPositional Representations… what do you use them for? I found myself in a jam recently because I needed an exploded assembly, but needed it for some really high quality renderings, so I wanted to use Inventor Studio.
The problem becomes how exactly to construct an exploded assembly when you are unable to use a Presentation File. The answer, obviously, is to use a positional rep. So… first things first, I have created a New Positional Representation and named it “Inventor Studio”. As you can see from the image below, I have also created a View Representation named the same thing and locked it, once I have the desired view and perspective angle set. More on this trick in a moment.
In any case, once the new positional rep is active I now simply override the constraints for the components I wish to move. This is accessed from the right click menu for any constraint other than an iMate, again, see the image below.
Granted, it is not as easy as using the Presentation File environment, and it is nowhere close to being as easy as Showcase, however there are some advantages. With this assembly that certainly was the case… the array of fasteners that held the valve cover on were all constrained together, so once I change the distance value for the first instance, they all moved simultaneously. Nice!Now, remember I said that there was an advantage to having a locked view rep? Well, once you are in the Inventor Studio environment, you can set a camera from a current view… which is exactly what I do now.
And if anything ever happens to change the camera view, we can always restore our locked view rep and then restore a new camera configuration from that view. And now, just a bit of Inventor Studio eye candy and we're done.
Well, that’s it for today. Hope this was informative and hope everyone has a great weekend.2 Comments | Add CommentIn The Gear Box > Inventor 2008, Images, Tips
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Consumer Products...
July 20, 2008 09:11 AMby Jay TedeschiA new video posted by Technogeekgal over at YouTube…
This one highlights a variety of products that were either designed with Autodesk MSD products, had marketing materials created with Autodesk Media & Entertainment products or both.
Enjoy.
0 Comment | Add CommentIn The Gear Box > Just for fun, Images, Industry News
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Motion Control...
July 11, 2008 11:24 PMby Jay TedeschiIt is not often that you find me singing the praises of a peripheral… but this is not just any peripheral. Most power users are already well aware of the value of the motion control devices sold by 3dConnexion. I myself have been using them and their predecessors since the original Spaceball way back in 1990. There is simply no keyboard or mouse based alternative to the smooth transitional movement between pans, zooms and rotations that can be achieved with these input devices. Well, there is a new addition to the 3DConnexion family and I have been lucky enough to have been using it now for the last couple of weeks. Behold the SpaceNavigator for Notebooks.
Here it is next to it’s bigger brother, the original SpaceNavigator. Now, I know quite a few of us road warriors who had faithfully lugged around the original ‘Navigator for quite some time simply because it was an example of almost perfect simplicity. It was heavy enough to resist moving around on the desk, and had only two buttons… again… simplicity. Well, its new sibling is absolutely beautiful, with the same functional characteristics and the same feel in a much smaller package. It is almost half an inch smaller in diameter and height, and somehow they managed to cut the weight in half. Now I know I just said that the additional weight of the original ‘Navigator was desirable, however carrying it around was not. The new model has a really nice “sticky” rubber base that gives it a feeling of being almost adhered to whatever surface you are working with it on.
I know, most of you gadget lovers think you want more buttons, but how often do you actually use them if you have them? I myself had the SpaceTraveler prior to the ‘Navigator, and while it had eight buttons around the circumference of the device, they were somewhat difficult to locate by touch, so myself and many others ended up programming them in pairs, which brought the button count down to 4. And if I stop and think about the ones I used more often than anything else, the count dropped to 2… one to perform a zoom fit, and the other to turn off rotations. Yep… turn off rotations. Why would I want to do that?Well, if you think about it, a fair amount of time in any modeling product these days is spent sketching, and for most of us that means working in a 2d planar view normal to the sketch plane. Suppressing device rotations allows us to continue using the ‘Navigator for panning and zooming, but will prevent us from rotating out of the plane of the sketch view. When you’re done sketching, hit the button and you are back to normal 6 axis motion control.
Well, that’s it for today… I hope this was informative. And for those of you already using one of these devices you got a good usability tip out of the column. Hope everyone has a great weekend and I will see you here again next week. Don’t forget to drop me some comments if you like what you read.
2 Comments | Add CommentIn The Gear Box > Industry News, Tips, Hardware