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In The Machine is the official blog of the Inventor Product Management Team. It is a way for us to share Inventor news, interesting information about successful Inventor customers and partners as well as tips and tricks. From time to time we’ll also use the blog to solicit feedback from users via surveys. This blog is hosted by Garin Gardiner our Technical Marketing Manager.
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Image Export Options
February 8, 2010 03:13 PMby Garin Gardiner
I noticed that Mark Flyler over at Imaginit posted a great article on pulling images from Inventor to be used as technical illustrations, Power Point or on web sites. You might simply want to get an image directly from your Inventor screen or perhaps a more customized image rendered from Inventor Studio. Mark starts out with the basic and works his way to Inventor Studio (including a few tips for using in Power Point). If you have ever needed to capture images out of Inventor, head on over to his blog post.
Nicely done Mark!
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Its all about materials
February 2, 2010 02:55 PMby Garin GardinerFor those of you that need to use materials (physical not visual) for your parts and assemblies that aren't in the Inventor standard template, this one is for you. I will also explain how you can apply specific hatch patterns per material in your drawings.
Lets take a look at how to add the materials you need. First, open a template file or part that you want to add a new material to. Open up the "Style Editor" from the Manage tab in the ribbon. Expand the Material node to show all the materials available in the part. If there is a material similar to what you would like to use, select it in the left portion on the dialog box and select New towards the top of the dialog box. Specify a new name and make the appropriate changes to the material. You can often find material properties by doing a Google/Bing search to locate a density table or any other properties you need.
Notice towards the bottom of the dialog box you can specify the color you want for this material.
Select done and we will proceed to the drawing environment to link up a hatch style to this material. Open a drawing or drawing template and navigate to the "Style Editor" just as we did in the part file. On the left pane select the standard you want to use (in my case I will use Default Standard (ANSI). Select the "Material Hatch Pattern Defaults" tab and either import materials from an existing file or bring in all the styles from an existing Style Library. Once imported you can select each material and apply a different hatch pattern to it that will be applied when you section your part/assembly.
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Alias Sketch for AutoCAD is here!
January 27, 2010 12:49 PMby Garin Gardiner
Today the labs team announced a new utility that adds Alias Sketching to AutoCAD. You may first wonder what you would do with something like this but take a look at the YouTube videos and I think you will find some interesting things you can do with it. I think it opens up interesting opportunities for using your 3D model and sketching over the top of it.
Head on over to Labs.Autodesk.com to download and play with Alias Sketch for AutoCAD.
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View Representation Tip from Ketiv
January 21, 2010 02:49 PMby Garin GardinerToday I came across a great 3 minute video our friends over at Ketiv posted that shows you how to use View Representations in Inventor. If you have ever wondered what View Reps are or have wanted a way to link View Reps to drawing views, head on over the View Representation tip at Ketiv's site as well as check out their other tips.
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Official Autodesk Inventor Podcast Episode 39 - Drawing Tips and Tricks
January 14, 2010 06:11 PMby Garin Gardiner
I have received several emails wondering if I was still podcasting. Yes I am still doing it and should be able to get back on a regular schedule (if I ever had one). This episode I cover various tasks to help annotate your drawings. I also cover several ways to add more intelligent data that will update with your model.
- Auto centerlines
- Move model dimensions from one view to another
- Add associative text to 3D model
- Add balloons with associative items like models mass properties
Zune
Don't forget to leave feedback by adding a comment to this post or email me.4 Comments | Add CommentIn In the Machine > Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Inventor Professional, Podcast, Tips, Inventor LT
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New Skill Builder
January 11, 2010 06:12 PMby Garin GardinerFor those of you that use Frame Generator and would like to learn how to make your own frame content, our Technical Publications team recently released a new Skill Builder to do just this. For their example they show you how to create T-Slot structural content and put it in Content Center to be used with Frame Generator.
They even start you off with a file you can download so head on over and check it out as well as many other Skill Builders.
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Rotate Drawing View
January 4, 2010 04:00 PMby Garin GardinerI am just getting back into the swing of things after a two week vacation for the Holidays and realized it’s been a while since I have posted last. I hope you all had a great New Years and look forward to a great year. Shortly before my vacation I received a question about rotating a drawing view so here it goes.
I build a simple part with a few angled faces and want to be able to create a drawing with a particular horizontal edge .
You will notice the top edge is close to horizontal although I want to rotate the entire drawing view to ensure it is at 0deg. In the browser right click on the drawing view you want to rotate and select Rotate.
Note: If Rotate is grayed out, you have a sketch overlaid on the view and it will block you from rotating the view.
From the Rotate View dialog you can select an edge to be Horizontal / Vertical or specify an Absolute / Relative angle for the view.
0 Comment | Add CommentIn In the Machine > Autodesk Inventor, Tips, Inventor LT
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Associative Project Edges
December 18, 2009 12:08 PMby Garin GardinerThis week I was visiting one of our long time Inventor users and received a request that we make it possible to associatively project edges to a plane. One example where this might be useful is if you have two steel members overlapping and you need to remove material from one of them for clearance - oh and did I say it needs to be associative? In the following example I am using a multi body part where I have two bodies representing each part.
In this case I created a sketch on the larger steel member and from the "Project Geometry" tool in the ribbon, I selected the drop down and chose "Project Cut Edges". This projects all the edges that pass through that sketch and makes them associative.
To make this a little more useful, I offset the projected edge of the smaller member to give me clearance and removed the material with an Extrude Cut.
Now I can move the smaller member to a new location and see the cut move with it.
0 Comment | Add CommentIn In the Machine > Inventor LT, Tips, Autodesk Inventor
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Inventor Beta 2 is here!
December 11, 2009 03:50 AMby Garin GardinerI have been a little behind with news the last few weeks due to preparing for Autodesk University and the mad rush while there. Beta 2 went live on Saturday Dec 5 and we have seen a lot of traffic the last few days. For those of you that haven't had a chance to sign up for Beta 2 and would like to play with the latest and greatest, shoot our beta team an email with the following information.
- "SikorskyB2" in the comment line
- First and last name
- Company name
Give it a few days and you should receive information on how to get your hands on the beta. There will also be a contest where the beta team will give out great prizes for various things like the most valuable feedback ant the best image using the new visualization tools.
Enjoy and send feedback!
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Welcome a new Inventor tool to Autodesk Labs (Inventor Publisher)
December 8, 2009 03:52 PMby Garin GardinerLast week we announced a new technology to Autodesk Labs around creating compelling 3D product documentation called Inventor Publisher. Inventor Publisher allows technical publication and illustration teams to leverage the same digital prototype created in Inventor that is used in the design to manufacturing process. You can work directly with 3D design models to communicate technical information without the need to learn CAD software.
This exciting technology is available now for download from the following locations Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States.
Enjoy!
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