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Ellipsis is the official blog of Autodesk's Technical Evangelist Team. We will discuss all things design and manufacturing related with a focus on industries such as automotive and transportation, consumer products, industrial machinery and building product manufacturing and fabrication. We also have resident experts who will blog about specific product developments in CAD, Simulation, Industrial Design and Data Management.
We look forward to providing you, our user community, with the most relevant and up to date developments in our industry, and hopefully with information that will assist you in doing your job better, faster, and more precisely.
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Steel Toed Berkinstocks
August 28, 2009 09:40 AMby Rob CoheeSo I was driving around the other day in my Ford F-250 Powerstroke - ha! There's a way to start off a blog about sustainable design in manufacturing... Did I mention that I burn BioDiesel? Smells like french fries.
Anyway, who's not hearing about sustainable design, eco-friendly, green initiatives these days? You can't swing a bat around here without coming across an article about sustainability. So how does that relate to manufacturers, and are there tools available to help us create more environmentally conscious products? Why yes there is...
LCA, or Life Cycle Analysis from Sustainable Minds is so much more than changing from one material to another. LCA incorporates Material Selection, Usage, Transportation of material and finished product, as well as End of Life process. LCA gives you a complete picture, far beyond switching from aluminum to recycled aluminum, allowing you to have a true picture of the environmental impact of your design decisions before a single part is ever cut.
Check out this video to learn more about taking an Autodesk Inventor assembly and importing it into Sustainable Minds, making multiple concepts and analyzing the results.
And visit http://www.sustainableminds.com/autodesk.to learn more about Sustainable Minds and sign up for a free trial. Hey, we all like free and I know you guys like trials.
-Rob "Greengo" Cohee
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1:44 Inventor: Shaft Generator and more
August 27, 2009 01:38 PMby Justin HoeyThis week I have two videos for you folks. The first one talks about one of our Design Accelerators, The Shaft Generator. The second video shows how to fix some problems that come up when working with multiple monitors.Lastly are some links that have come across this week that i found really good. Now I'm really hungy after looking at them. ENJOY!
Instruction on how to build the best PB&J - http://www.imageonto.com/full/30a87cz894t707Top Fast Food Items You Can't Find On The Menu - http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/fast-food/off-the-menu/
And for my last link. Be sure to check out Autodesk Northern Europe Manufacturing Technical Team
Thanks and be sure to check out the rest of my videos at http://www.youtube.com/justinhoeyAnd follow my on Twitter @ http://www.twitter.com/EverydayTropic0 Comment | Add CommentIn Ellipsis >
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Simulation of the Fourth Dimension?
August 27, 2009 09:10 AMby Brian SatherContinuing on the topic of factory floor layout...the last post we talked about the ridiculous amount of options available in terms of geometry import...everything from Inventor to Google SketchUp to 3D Point Clouds. Another really cool feature in there is 4D simulation...in other words, the ability to see how the different machines, conveyors, and other components will come together over time. And since you probably already have some fancy Gantt charts made up in Microsoft Project, Navisworks lets you import that data directly from your project planning software. Just another example of how Digital Prototyping lets you identify where potential issues could occur prior to actually building it...
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Diverge
August 26, 2009 09:03 AMby Brian SatherFor the past couple years I’ve shared an office space with an artist. Yeah, that’s right, an artist. A beret wearing, abstract thinking, creative person. The anti-engineer. He’s not really like that (well, he does not wear a beret anyways), and I have to admit that I’ve learned more from him than I ever imagined I would. What’s the most important thing he’s taught me? To diverge.
As engineers we are groomed from birth to do exactly the opposite – we’re supposed to converge on the one perfect answer to any given problem. We take math courses where 4 plus 4 always equals 8 and physics courses where apples always fall straight down from trees. Artists take classes that say otherwise. Engineers think critically about function and performance and often we look at what has been done in the past to see how we should move forward. Artists also look at what has been done in the past, but as they move forward they try to do something completely different. Originality and creativity are how they’re graded, whereas engineers are graded on whether or not a product performs the intended function and if we deliver on-time…creativity is not a part of the design review.
But here’s the sticking point…the definition of innovation (that buzzword every company is striving for) includes doing something different…creative…new. Trying something that we haven’t tried before. Diverging.
And now more than ever we have the tools that give us the opportunity to diverge into yet unexplored worlds without having to risk the entire business. Rather than coming up with one solution that then gets polished to perfection we can create tons of different design options in the beginning and through analysis determine which are the most promising.
This is the reason Digital Prototyping is so cool – we can try out a new material we’ve never used before, or simulate how a radically new part design is going to function. We can test seemingly ridiculous ideas that might reveal something we would have never found out otherwise. We can diverge.
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Navisworks for Manufacturing
August 21, 2009 08:19 AMby Brian SatherNavisworks has been used in the architecture, engineering, and construction world for quite some time to bring in huge amounts of multi-cad data to visualize what a building is going to look like, coordinate large projects, and interference detection. More recently we introduced Navisworks for Manufacturing - which brings the same tools to help with factory floor layout. There are some really powerful tools in there - including the ability to import pretty much any time of geometry from AutoCAD and Inventor to even Google SketchUp. You can also bring in point clouds of 3D laser scanned data to see how well a new workcell or machine will fit into an existing space and take virtual walkthroughs of your building...some very cool stuff in there and much more to come. Check out the video below...
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More Frame Generator Goodness
August 19, 2009 10:22 AMby Rob CoheeSo Brian Frank and I were working on a problem a customer was having with sheet metal parts the other day. Essentially what they wanted to do was to miter the corners of a window frame where each piece was a piece of sheet metal. How many of you have tried this before using cuts, sketches, copy object, split... I've tried them all and none of them work as slick as the miter feature with Frame Generator.
So the two of us put our heads together and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to get the bends to come across during the publish to frame generator procedure. We knew it had to be an extrusion and not a series of faces or even a contour flange due to the fact that the frame generator is looking to control an extrusion - cool, no big deal. We just sketch out a closed profile, extrude, then put the bends on it later.
Brian figured it out first. You have to select OK during the authoring, allow the dialog to close, then place your bends, call up the authoring dialog again and choose publish. Sounds more complicated than it is so check out this video to see how its done.
-Rob
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1:44 Inventor Studio Tip Part 3: Lighting
August 17, 2009 01:06 PMby Justin HoeyYes we are on the 3rd tip in the Inventor Studio Series. We are going to take a quick look at what lighting can do for you renderings, and what I find work best for me.
Also I have started a new series of videos that show what I model while I should be sleeping, or just board modeling. Check it out!0 Comment | Add CommentIn Ellipsis >
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A Little Fan Mail / Support Question...
August 17, 2009 09:14 AMby Rob CoheeRob:
Love your videos! I can appreciate your dry sense of humor (don't take offense to that) and abstract thinking towards things that have nothing to do with the subject at hand. I too cannot get through the day without at least trying to mess up someone else's thought process. That is why I picked you, my soon to be new best friend.
I've been working with AutoCAD since 2003 and Inventor since 2007. I'm mostly self taught, hence the reason for this message. I design and build high end [WIDGETS] for a [NEVERLAND] based company and seem to be struggling with yet another turning point in my incredibly frustrating but also very rewarding Inventor career.
You see I need to create models and drawings for a lot of the framed shower doors that we sell to our customers. Although this sounds simple, this irritates me so much that I find myself thinking about this at just about every free moment I have when I'm not at work.
You see, no two units that we sell are EVER the same!!!!! Yeah, a pain in the [REAR END] but that is what this oh so interesting niche business presents to me.
There are so many different configurations; single [WIDGET], single [W] with a [W] above, single [W] with a [W] above, single [W] with a [W] and [W] above, and, oh yeah, then the [W] can be swinging left or right and mounted to the left or right of the [WSo at this point you may or may not see what I am trying to accomplish here. I have developed a couple of templates that are parameter controlled through a dummy part file. This seems like the way to go. I also developed some "templates" that use the Frame Generator for IV 2008 plug in. The "template" I created is a group of files in a folder that when I copy and paste the entire folder I can open the parameter file, change the sizes of the unit and it updates the assembly file. This (if it works as designed) gives me a new drawing, cut sizes, etc. that correspond to the customer sizes. My question is:
Do you think I am going about this the right way? Are you confused? If you're not you are either very smart (which from your videos this could be true) or you have vast knowledge of the [WIDGET] industry.My response:
Dear Widget Manufacturer,
Fantastic description of a complex issue. And that's the thing about being a custom manufacturer - you want to be able to address any custom need for the same cost as a catalog order... tough task indeed.
But that's the beauty behind Digital Prototyping and some of the automation tools built into Inventor. Based on your description it sounds like you have already seen the value in setting up templates for your primary product lines and reusing those for each configuration. That's a great start - but I would add Vault to the equation. Autodesk Vault has a feature called "Copy Design" This will work a lot better than using Windows Explorer for your Inventor file management.
Just as one problem solved leads to another, Vault will not be the end all for what you want to do. It will improve your file management but is not a configuration creation tool. I would look into utilizing some of the iLogic functionality and create a configuration or two. Take one of the product lines you mention above and apply some iLogic to it. Here is where I would recommend working with a reseller to get you started with iLogic. Just a ton of possibility here, it's so wide open its like suggesting installing a VB editor and saying write an app - you have to decide what your desired result is first, then work back from that.... I hope that made sense.
The blunt honest truth of the matter is that you have a difficult design challenge ahead of you. All the cost and effort of configurating a product line is ALL up front and it is sometimes difficult to convince a boss that I you need 25K (for example) to automate the design of a product line and he won't see a return on that for 3 mos - but it might return (for example) 10X in the first year....? Design automation is challenging and expensive up front, but as soon as the first configuration is done the payoff is (for example J) immediate.
Inventor, Vault, iLogic, and even Autodesk Intent - we use Inventor as a basis for all sorts of configuration tools - it’s a matter of finding the balance between desired result, and budget... The more effort you put into the configuration tool, the greater the payoff.
I'm not sure that I answered any of your questions, I imagine not. What I do know though is that I believe you are headed in the right direction. I would upgrade to 2010 which gives you iLogic technology as well as a much improved Autodesk Vault. Start with Copy Design within Vault with your current files and see what that does or doesn't get you. Then determine where iLogic could help fill in some of that.
All in all, determine if this is something that you want to tackle in house - or if a month’s worth of consulting will give you guys the leg up on this that you may be looking for.
Hope this helps at least validate that what you are attempting is quite a challenge, but that you are headed in the right direction and that it can be done...
Cheers,
-RobSo MFG Community - any other advice for this guy? I know you guys have some great ideas here....
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Top 5 Inductees into the 2009 SkyMall Hall-of-Fame
August 12, 2009 06:45 PMby Brian SatherIn honor of National Inventors Month and the fact that I’ve been nowhere except on a plane for the past couple weeks, I bring you the 2009 SkyMall Invention Hall-of-Fame. Each August we evaluate the current edition of SkyMall magazine to determine which products deserve induction into this very exclusive club. It was unbelievably difficult narrowing down this year’s inductees to just 5, but I think we have ourselves a legendary class of products here. So let’s kick this year’s ceremony off with…
#1 The SkyRest®
This product takes the Ellipsis blog’s big honor for, what else, the use of ellipses. In a quote from a Dallas Morning News review they edited out just a few key words, “You can be … more comfortable with a SkyRest pillow.” Who actually knows what the ellipses are being used in place of, but you can be certain it isn’t as intriguing as they mystery left behind so potential buyers can imagine the limitless possibilities of the SkyRest…
#2 Big Pitcher Water Treatment System
We all know how tiring it can be to have to breathe 24-7 to get that infusion of O2 into your bloodstream...but now you can relax! Thanks to the Big Pitcher Water Treatment System you can stop breathing entirely and get all the oxygen you need by drinking simple, everyday water. You know you’re going to drink it anyways so stop all that hassle involved with inhaling and exhaling and get that dose of air the simpler way, by guzzling down glass after glass of H2O!
[Note: Product use not endorsed by Autodesk…we recommend you continue breathing.]
#3 Snore Terminator
My wife tells me I’m a really loud snorer…all I can say is that it doesn’t bother me! But now we can both enjoy a good 3:00AM freak out when I get a “safe” electronic buzz to the arm because of a little congestion. But it is true that men are dogs and we should be treated as so…just give us a good shock and we’ll roll over. Just be warned that we may expect a “treat” afterwards.
#4 Pet Doorbell
OK, this is an awesome invention in theory…but obviously the person who designed it has never had both a dog and a doorbell together in the same home. Can somebody please tell me what dogs do when the doorbell rings? Oh, that’s right…they start jumping up and down, barking, and “leaking” (just a little squirt) all over the floor. Combine this with the Indoor Dog Restroom (found on page 23) and then you’ll never have to let that pesky animal outside again.
#5 Neck Pro Traction Device
Did you know that chiropractors only go to school for a measly 2 extra years to get qualified to crack backs? Psshh…what a racket. But now you can align that neck and spine from the comfort of your own home using the Neck Pro Traction Device. Simply hang the noose…umm…I mean head gear...from the ceiling and step off a wobbly chair! You’ll be straightened out in no time!
Disqualified - The Slanket
OK, the Slanket would have made it into the top 5 had it not been such a blatant ripoff of The Snuggie. Not only did Snuggie make it to market first, but they became a pop-culture phenomenon found in countless YouTube hits like The WTF Blanket and even a spinoff called Snuggie for Dogs. Can’t beat that, sorry Slanket.
And there we have it. Another year of great inventions and our Top 5 Inductees into the SkyMall Hall-of-Fame. See you next time when we look at adding this year’s honorable mentions, the Zombie Garden Statue, Truck Antlers, and Pet Gate (prison) into this prestigious club.
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1:44 Inventor Studio Tip Part 2
August 10, 2009 04:51 PMby Justin HoeyThis is part 2 in the series about Inventor Studio: Scene Setup. Taking a look at what it take to set up a scene and what one is my faviorit one
Also be sure to follow me on Twitter and YouTube
Look for a new series from me later this week!
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