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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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More Fun Inventor Models
January 26, 2006 09:59 AMby
I received an email from Jurgen Wagner. He runs an Inventor FAQ site in German that includes a gallery of all sorts of fun Inventor models. Check out this car and visit his site for more eye candy.
-Amy
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Pattern Along a Path
January 23, 2006 09:23 PMbyDon't let the rectangular pattern fool you, it can do more than just create rectangular patterns. Have you ever needed to pattern a feature along a path such a series of holes spaced around the perimeter of a part?
To create a pattern around a path, create a feature such as a hole and a 2D path you would like the hole to be patterned around. Activate the Rectangular Pattern feature and select the hole as the feature and the 2D sketch as Direction 1. You then have the option to enter the number of holes and the spacing between holes, the number of holes and their overall spacing or the amount of holes that will be equally spaced around the 2D Sketch.
I have found this to be a very useful tool at times.
Garin
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To Be a Kid Again!!
January 23, 2006 09:11 AMbyLast week my 4 year old son told me "Mommy I don't want to be a kid anymore". I had to be serious at the time, but inside I was laughing about the irony of it all. I am sure most of us would love to be kids again. This is evidenced by some of the sample models I got from people who use Inventor in their spare time.
Check out this toy tank (at 1/35 scale) that one of our QA guys modeled when testing Inventor. I'm sure my son would have fun with that. And one of our resellers in Australia sent me a DWF file ( Download surf_board.dwf ) of a surfboard he is modeling for fun. How cool is that! It's been raining for a over a month in Portland - I could probably use it in my backyard!! -Amy
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Win an XBox 360
January 20, 2006 08:45 AMbyThis year we are giving out really good prizes during the Inventor Beta - iPod Nanos, an XBox 360, 3Dconnexion® SpacePilot 3D controllers and the first 2000 people to sign up get a welcome kit with a DVD (in case you want to skip the download), some useful info and a thank you gift.
Beta is a great way to help us ensure a high-quality release, while at the same getting a head-start on what's coming. Just follow these 3 easy steps:
1) Visit http://myfeedback.autodesk.com and review the "Becoming a Candidate" information.
2) âSign Upâ? ! Make sure to enter "INV-E1" in the Beta Code field at the top of your profile, and please check the "Autodesk Inventor Professional" box in the list of Autodesk products towards the bottom. Shortly after signing up, you will receive an email with your password to MyFeedback, Autodesk's Beta testing web portal. (If you have participated in other Autodesk product Beta programs before, you should already have a MyFeedback account. Just click on "User" to update your profile and overwrite any existing beta code.)
3) When the software becomes available, you will receive another email giving you access to the main Autodesk Inventor Beta website.
Amy
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Attach a Help Document to iFeatures
January 11, 2006 09:45 AMbyThrough the use of iFeatures you can save features that can be reused in other designs. These iFeature can contain company standard features that can quickly be inserted into any part file. Depending on the complexity of the iFeatures, there can be several selections to properly place the iFeature. To help others with the proper steps, you can insert a help document that can be opened upon an iFeature placement.
First create a document (Word, DWF, PDF) with the appropriate steps to placing the iFeature. To insert a help document into an iFeature, open an existing iFeature file (.ide) in Inventor and select Insert > Object > Create from File and select the help document for the iFeature. Once a file has been attached you will notice a new object in the browser named 3rd Party. Expand 3rd Party and right mouse button on the newly imported file to select Placement Help. Save the edited iFeature and close the document.
Open a part that you would like to insert the iFeature into and select insert iFeature from the panel bar. Browse to the desired iFeature and select Open. You will notice that if a Placement Help has been attached, there will be a blue icon in the bottom left side of the dialog box next to the help icon. Select the icon to open the embedded document that contains the Placement Help.
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Modeling in Your Spare Time?
January 5, 2006 10:39 PMbyI'm always amazed by the Inventor users I meet who find time to model things in their spare time. Charlie Bliss' website has a bunch of examples including the famous Indian motorcycle and the Hiller helicopter.
I recently recieved an email from Wayne Jordan at Siemens in Pittsburg, PA. In this DWF file is a reverse engineered bicycle fork. Wayne reports that "The fork is a Vector II, what is unique about this fork is that it is a parallelogram linkage fork and instead of using telescopic fork sliders it uses a rear shock absorber instead. It had quite a reputation in the mountain biking community for having great lateral stiffness and excellent tracking capabilities."
If you've got a project you are working on in your spare time that you'd like to share with the Inventor community plese feel free to send it to me at amy.bunszel@autodesk.com.
-Amy
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A rant about the competition!
January 5, 2006 01:05 PMbyI need to rant for just one moment about our competition- SolidWorks. You can't be involved with CAD today without taking notice of the fierce competition between Autodesk and SolidWorks. I try to keep most of this stuff out of this forum since I don't think mudslinging is really helpful to our users... however when things are blatantly misrepresented I have to act. SolidWorks recently published a press release about Leatherman Tools switching to SoldWorks. They are one of our local customers up here in Oregon. This was a huge shock to us, and come to find out it is NOT TRUE AT ALL. One of their divisions bought a couple seats of SolidWorks and they were totally blowing it out of proportion. As much as I'd like for everyone to use only Inventor (it is the best product after all :-)) we know there are sometimes good reasons for having multiple systems. Tenlinks has posted the TRUTH for us. Enough said... I'll go back to doing something more productive now!
-Amy
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Work Planes
January 3, 2006 03:20 PMby
Offset Sketch Plane
I often find it necessary to create a sketch that is offset from an existing face. This is usually a two step process by first creating a work plane then placing a sketch on the newly created work plane. There is a quick trick that will allow you create a work plane and sketch at the same time. Once you activate the sketch tool, move over an existing face to click and drag up or down. This will bring up the work plane offset dialog box and allow you to enter a value to create the work plane. Once you enter a value or dynamically drag to the right offset distance, select the checkbox. You will notice a new work plane was created and a sketch is active on the newly created plane.
Dynamic Mid-plane
Another trick I often use is the ability to create a work plane between two faces without having to use parameters. While in a part you can simply activate the work plane tool and select two parallel faces/planes and create a work plane that will always update to be in the middle of the selected faces/planes. This works great when you need a work plane in the middle of a plate regardless what thickness the plate is. If the plate thickness is changed, the work plane will also update to remain in the middle of the plate.
-Garin
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Using Inventor to get Energy from the Sea
January 3, 2006 11:39 AMbyA recent Cadalyst write up describes how an Inventor customer - Marine Current Turbines creates electricity from the sea using a hydropower turbine. The turbine was modeled in Autodesk Inventor allowing the design team to explore what-if scenarios using ANSYS and other FEA (finite element analysis) applications. The culmination of this data resulted in a new unit three times more powerful than the existing one.
-Amy
