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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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AU Day One
November 29, 2006 08:44 AMby Garin GardinerWhat a long but great day it's been in Sunny Las Vegas (they tell me its sunny out). I had a great day mingling with nearly 7,000 attendees at Autodesk University today. I was also able to catch up with Russ Wicks and saw the car that broke one of the world speed records. Here is a shot of the car tonight in the exhibit hall.
I also had a chance to talk to many Inventor customers and see some of the great things they are doing with our software. While talking to Attilio at Lynch Fluid Controls he had a great quote I had to capture when we were talking about functional modeling I dont have to stress about the details anymore, now I can spend my time designing. I couldnt have said it better myself.
Looking forward to seeing what's in store for me tomorrow.
Garin
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Inventor Podcast Episode #6 (Special Technology Preview)
November 22, 2006 07:12 PMby Garin GardinerNovember 2006 - Episode 6 Podcast Show Notes
Right click here and select "Save Target As..." to save a local copy
Its also located on iTunes.
News:
1. Inventor of the Month = Marin Bikes
2. Functional Design Revisited
Events:
1. Autodesk University (AU) Nov 28 Dec 1
2. River City INCAT Autodesk Mfg User Group Meeting Nov 28
3. Inventor Hands-On Test Drive Nov 30
4. Inventor FREE Friday Workshop
Technology Preview: DWG TrueConnect
1. DWG TrueConnect - Inventor to AutoCAD
2. DWG TrueConnect - AutoCAD to Inventor
3. DWG TrueConnect - Update 2D projects with Inventor
4. DWG TrueConnect - Communicate with a Single File
5. upFront.eZine article - Ralph Grabowski
Tips and Tricks:
1. Avatech Tricks: Drawing for Dough
2. Drawing Threads in Autodesk Inventor
3. Make it adaptive
Enjoy!
Garin
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Inventor Studio Video
November 22, 2006 08:13 AMby Garin GardinerThis week I have been spending most of my time trying to get ready for a few classes at Autodesk University. The main class I am working on is primarily about collaboration tools in Inventor such as presentations, DWF and Inventor Studio. I put together a little video for the class and thought I would post it to YouTube.com.
Enjoy!
Garin
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Inventor for Bicycles
November 16, 2006 12:06 AMbyI don't have to work very hard to find Inventor tie-ins to my daily life. A few years ago as first time parents we went out to buy our 3.5 year old daughter a bicycle. Now it couldn't just be any old Toys R Us or KMart bike for our budding bike rider. I insisted we go to a bicyle shop where she could be 'fitted' by professionals. I also wanted to stay as far away as possible from the overly frilly Disney and Dora bikes- after all I might have to look at this thing for a while!
So we ended up buying a very nice light pink Marin mountain bike -- as if a 3 year old would need a mountain bike! My company(Linius Technologies) had just been acquired by Autodesk and I don't think I even realized there was a place called Marin in northern California. Well now I can drive to Marin with my eyes closed and come to find out Marin Bikes is an Inventor customer. How is that for irony!
It's been 4 years and my daughter is now 7 and that bike has stood the test of time - maybe some day soon it will even see a mountain - but I think we need to ditch the training wheels first. I was reminded of this whole story because Marin Bikes is the October Inventor of the Month. You can check out all the previous inventors here and if you are a member of the manufacturing community you can also nominate an inventor. I believe at the end of the year we are going to let users vote on their favorite.
Enjoy! Amy
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Make it Adaptive!
November 10, 2006 08:51 AMby Garin GardinerThe other day I received a question on how to make a bellow that would adjust as the model changes. I thought I would put a few steps together for anybody that might need to do something like this. If you havent played with Adaptive yet, this can be a great area to explore and may offers you a lot of flexibility in your assemblies. But before you go off and make everything adaptive, there are limits on where you will want to use this. Adaptive is a great concept tool to help flush out a design and typically you should turn off the adaptivity on those parts once you have locked down their design intent. Another area where adaptive is nice is in parts like bellows and springs that you need to update as the model changes. Keep in mind the more adaptive parts you have in your assembly, the longer it can take to compute so try to only have necessary parts set as adaptive in an assembly.
Lets get into making an adaptive bellow.
First, create a sketch thats fully constrained other than the area you would like to adapt. In the following example I have created a sketch for my bellow that has a constant thickness as well as all the fillets and lengths constrained other than the actual length of the bellow as well as the angles of the bellow. To make sure the bellow updates correctly I created a driven angle constraint and made the second angle constrained equal to the first (d19 = d27).
At this point I can test my design by dragging my sketch to see the profile adjust as I would want it to.
Once my sketch is set up properly I can then revolve my part and put it into an assembly. For my example I have created a circular plate and added an extra instance in my assembly in order to constrain them on both ends of the bellow. To make the bellow adaptive, edit the part from the assembly and right click on the bellow sketch and select adaptive. The sketch and part should now be adaptive in the assembly. From here just return to the top level of the assembly before the next step.
The last step before I can drive this is to add a mate constraint between the two plates with an offset that will adapt the bellow. Once this constraint is in place I can right click on the constraint and select Drive Constraint with a start / end value as well as check Drive Adaptive before you hit play to see my bellow animate.
If you would like the sample I have created select here to download.
Enjoy,
Garin
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Sign up for Inventor Beta Now
November 8, 2006 09:27 PMbyWe are just a few days away from kicking off the next Inventor Beta.
Participating as a Beta tester is a great way for you to help ensure a high-quality released product, and it is also a unique opportunity to receive early hands-on time with the software. This year we will also be hosting a series of webcasts designed to help you learn about specific areas of the release and have a chance to ask questions of the experts.
Please visit http://myfeedback.autodesk.com, and create or update your profile. Make sure to enter "GODDARD" in the Beta Code field, and then stay tuned for more information soon.
We hope you can join us!
-Amy
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November is Beta Season
November 1, 2006 09:41 PMbyGet ready the next Inventor Beta is about to start!! We are going to begin recruiting beta testers in the next few days. And this year since we are starting Beta before AU we're giving a Beta tester private session at AU. Stay tuned for more details.
-Amy
1 Comment | Add CommentIn In the Machine > Autodesk Inventor
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Win a 30GB iPod Video
November 1, 2006 09:51 AMby Garin Gardiner
There is a new contest that started yesterday (Oct 30) and runs through Nov 27 for new content submitted to the Manufacturing Community. The member that submits the highest rated content each week will receive a 30 GB iPod Video.
This is a great chance to post standard content that you have created as well as see what other Inventor users are creating.
Good luck!
Garin