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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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Running of the horse
May 13, 2008 02:54 PMby Garin GardinerWithout knowing you have probably seen this mechanical horse in several Hollywood productions. The most recent was in Super Bowl XXII where Shaquille O’Neal is a jockey in a horse race, ultimately winning by “his own” nose.
The horse was initially designed for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and has had an appearance in other Hollywood titles.
Datum3 had to design and ship a lifelike mechanical horse in 21 days and needed to be as creative as possible to pull off the deign. Datum3 created a digital prototype of the horse using Inventor then manufactured and assembled it in just seven days.Take a look at the Datum3 website for more information and other interesting projects they have been involved in.
0 Comment | Add CommentIn In the Machine > News, Misc.
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Custom Profiles and more... (Video Podcast Episode 23)
May 8, 2008 12:54 AMby Garin Gardiner
Wednesday May 7, 2008 - Episode 23 Podcast Show Notes
It's hard to believe but here is episode 23 of the Official Inventor Podcast. This episode we cover custom frames for Frame Generator as well as some parameter and drawings tips. They all go together well for a 15 minute podcast so take a listen and I hope you find something of use.
If you want the file I used to create my custom frames here it is.
Zune - coming soon (at least I am trying)
Don't forget to leave feedback by adding a comment to this post or email me. -
Autodesk Announces Intent to Acquire Moldflow
May 1, 2008 06:03 PMby Garin Gardiner
For those of you that create plastic parts might be interested to know what Autodesk today announced the intent to acquire Moldflow. If you would like a little more information take a look at the recent announcement.
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More about the View Cube
April 28, 2008 06:00 AMby Garin Gardiner
Recently Jay over at "The Gear Box" posted about the new Home View option when right clicking or selecting the home button on the View Cube tool. This made me think about one of my favorite new things in Inventor 2009 along the same lines.
One of my pet peeves in the past has been trying to place a front or top view in a drawing without having to rotate or try different views. This is because the front view in the drawing isn't the same as my intended front view of my part or assembly. If I wasn't careful when I started creating my part, the drawing views never matched up with my model views so I couldn't select front view and actually get a front view in my drawing. Now with the View Cube you can specify your Front view in your model and have the drawing use the same views.
To do this open your drawing template and select the Format pull-down and select "Style and Standard Editor..." to launch your styles. Select the standard you are using and then select the "View Preferences" tab. You will notice there is a drop-down for "Front View Plane" that you can select the "From Model".
Thats it! Now whenever you create a drawing and specify Front View you will actually get the Front View from your model.
Cheers!
0 Comment | Add CommentIn In the Machine > Autodesk Inventor, Inventor LT, Tips
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New on Labs
April 25, 2008 12:11 PMby Garin Gardiner
The most recent utility to show up on Labs is "Sustainable Materials Assistant for Inventor" that allows Inventor users to Think green by considering sustainability early in your design process. If this is of interest to you head on over to http://labs.autodesk.com and check it out. There are also a few videos available for more info if you want to see it in actions.
0 Comment | Add CommentIn In the Machine > Inventor LT, News, Autodesk Inventor
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What will you think of next...
April 24, 2008 11:40 AMby Garin GardinerThis morning I was playing around on YouTube and found a few fun little videos I thought I would share. I always love to see what crazy things some of you do in your spare time.
This is a great little animation of a pinball machine using Simulation in Inventor Professional
Another animation created in Inventor Professional with the Simulation capabilities
This is a great little animation of a Logitech mouse that looks really good.
If you create something that you think other Inventor users might enjoy feel free to shoot me a link.
Garin
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What About Those Fractions?
April 21, 2008 02:10 PMby Garin GardinerFor those of you that need to display fractions in your parts list, here is a new little nugget that I ran across that was added in Inventor 2009. I was working with a company that makes wood furniture and as you can imagine, they wanted to have a parts list with all the lengths, widths and thickness of each piece of lumber displayed as fraction instead of decimal and make sure they would automatically update as part lengths changed.
To do this I created a few parameters for length, width and thickness and marked them as exportable (making them exportable is critical to display them in the parts list).
Here is where the new option comes in to export as fractions. Right click on the Model Value and select "Custom Property Format..." to format how the parameter will be exported and used in the parts list. From here I selected Fraction instead of Decimal although if you want to use a different unit you can have it export something else as well as changing the precision.
This can open a lot of door for using one unit type for the part model although displaying something completely different in the parts list. To be able to pull this all over to the parts list you need format your part description to have the parameters you want. Open one of the parts and open iProperties from the File menu. From here I will input the parameters I want to display in the description and select apply to see the value update. If you need to make changes after you select apply, you can right click on the value and select "Edit Expression" in Inventor 2009.
Now you can create open your drawing and see that everything has been formatted in fractions in your parts list.
Hope there are a few of you out there that use fractions that this will help out.
Garin
1 Comment | Add CommentIn In the Machine > Inventor LT, Tips, Autodesk Inventor
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Autodesk Extends Inventor LT Technology Preview
April 8, 2008 04:39 AMby Garin GardinerThis might be old news to some since it officially was announced a few weeks ago (I am just a little slow) but great news none the less. Over the last year, Inventor LT (Technology Preview) has became very successful in enabling manufactures to create, share and edit 3D parts from various CAD systems. Inventor LT uses the same file formats as Inventor and Inventor Professional (IPT, DWG & IDW) which allows users to easily share data.
Perhaps even better news is that there will be an updated version available this spring based on Inventor 2009. If you are interested in learning more about Inventor LT head on over to labs.autodesk.com and select the Inventor LT link. You can also use the some of the other labs tools with Inventor LT such as the Translator Add-ins, Feature Recognition and 2D to 3D tool.
For those of you outside the US, Inventor LT will also be available in Canada, Australia and New Zeland. There are additional plans to release Inventor LT to other select contries in 2008.
We would love to hear how you are using this tool so feel free to add any comments.
Garin
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Adding Textures to Inventor Parts
April 5, 2008 03:46 PMby Garin GardinerThe INCAT CAD Geeks have posted a great tip for creating and editing your Inventor Styles. This tip will show you how to add textures to your parts and assemblies to make them look more realistic.
To make this tip even better, somebody added a comment mentioning a great place to pull various pre-made textures from http://www.inventorwizard.be/textures/index.html. Hope you all find this useful.
Garin
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What's New with Inventor 2009 (Article 4)
April 2, 2008 01:49 PMby Garin GardinerThe Power of 64-bit Inventor and Large Assembly Capacity
We all understand the importance of power. The bigger the load you have to drive the more power you need!
Today’s digital prototypes are larger and more complex than ever and Autodesk is investing heavily to give you the power you need.In the past five years, hard drive space and processor speed has increased five times over. The limiting factor has been RAM – the most 32-bit software applications could address was 4GB.
The 64-bit release of Inventor 2009 removes this limit, allowing users to use up to 128 GB of RAM! (OS limites, see table 1)
By installing Inventor 2009, all users – including those who remain with 32 bit systems – will experience improved performance. Both the 32 and 64 bit versions of Inventor have been optimized for the SSE2 technology found on all modern processors: Intel Pentium 4, AMD Athlon, and AMD Opteron. You can expect as much as a 15% improvement in overall performance.
Table 1
I have had a few questions already concerning how to get a 64 bit version of 2009. If you have received 2009, you already have it! We look at your OS when we install Inventor and if you have a 64 bit version of Windows (XP 64 or Vista 64) we automatically install the 64 bit version on that machine - easy as that. I have been using the 64 bit version for a while and can tell you there are MANY things I can do with the 64 bit version that I can't do on my 32 bit machine.
Enjoy all of those large assemblies now!
Garin
0 Comment | Add CommentIn In the Machine > News, Autodesk Inventor
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