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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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CAD Wars the video
June 27, 2008 01:55 PMby Garin GardinerI am about to head out of town on vacation for the week of July 4th but ran across this great YouTube video that was created using Inventor 2009 and thought I had to post it. I am sure we have some Star Wars fans out there that will get a kick out of this.
For those of you that enjoy the podcast - I should have one out the week of July 7th.
If you are in the US, have a great holiday.
Garin
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Another use for a Wiimote
June 26, 2008 01:03 PMby Garin Gardiner
For those of you that have been lucky enough to find a Nintendo Wii and wonder what else you can use that Wiimote for - now you can use it to navigate your 3D models around on your PC. The folks over at labs.autodesk.com have recently posted a way to connect the Wiimote to Design Review. If you don't have a Wii and would like to try this out, you can still purchase a Wiimote for about $40 since that is all you need (it works through Bluetooth).
If you are interested on how this can be done today head on over to the labs site and check it out. I also ran across a video that has already been posted of somebody doing this if you would like to see it in action.
Enjoy
Garin
a.k.a. Xbox gamer tag AntimatterBomb
0 Comment | Add CommentIn In the Machine > Misc., Tips, Helpful Resources
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Evenly Spaced
June 23, 2008 11:14 AMby Garin GardinerI often run into scenarios where I want several features to be evenly spaced but I don't know what the actual offset distance is. Here is a quick tip to be able to take something like 4 holes that you want to be equally spaced without having to create a parameter to drive them. First create a sketch with the four hole centers and add dimensions to lock both the left and right holes from the edges of the part.
Next add dimensions to each hole center and when prompted that the last dimension will over-constrain the sketch, accept it as a driven dimension.
Here is where we can easily make them all the same size. Edit each of the non-driven dimensions and select last dimension you created that is the driven dimension (the one in parenthesis). You will notice when doing this that they will all become equal and as the part length changes, the holes will still stay evenly spaced.
This tip works well for much more than just creating evenly spaced holes. Hope you can find some great ways to use it!
5 Comments | Add CommentIn In the Machine > Inventor LT, Tips
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UI Technology Preview for Autodesk Inventor 2009
June 16, 2008 10:04 AMby Garin Gardiner
User Interface Technology Preview for Autodesk Inventor 2009
Today on Autodesk Labs we released a concept preview of a new UI that will work on your existing Inventor 2009. We think you will find it easy to locate the tools you have used over the years and even discover new tools along the way that you didn't even realized existed in Inventor.
We understand with anything new, there will be a short time needed to familiarize yourself with the new UI. Here is a quick video to help with a few items while you are pulling down the new UI.
Once you have had a chance to use the new interface, we hope that you can take a few minutes and send us feedback of your experience.
1 Comment | Add CommentIn In the Machine > News, Autodesk Inventor
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New skill builder posted (Inventor Studio)
June 12, 2008 12:28 AMby Garin GardinerAdvanced Camera Animation
One of my favorite tools in Inventor is Inventor Studio for rendering. Whenever I need to make a nice animation or image, I always look forward to playing around a bit inside of Studio. I suppose it comes from my 3ds Max days but Inventor Studio is a pretty powerful rendering tool that will probably do a lot more than most of you are aware of. I also look forward to Picture Friday on the Inventor Discussion Group where several of you typically post nice images from your models.
The other day I was emailed a link to a new Skill Builder for Inventor Studio showing advanced tools for animating cameras along a path. If you ever need to do something like this, take a look at this tutorial with sample files.
Create and associate cameras to paths
This Skill Builder assists those who make animations of parts or assemblies. It provides the most straightforward way to animate cameras. It does assume that you are using Autodesk Inventor 2009 since these tools aren't available in 2008.
Maybe we will start to see Animation Fridays.
Enjoy!
0 Comment | Add CommentIn In the Machine > Tips, Autodesk Inventor
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New addition to Labs (Inventor iMap)
June 7, 2008 01:57 PMby Garin Gardiner
Have you ever needed to examine your assembly structure to better understand the various relationships or constraints? I know at times we have all needed to see how something is constrained together or just better understand its relationships with other components. Yesterday we released a new tools called iMap that installs on Inventor 2009 and is activated in an assembly by right clicking and selecting Constraint iMap or Skeleton iMap from the menu.
For more information and to download this free tool, head on over to labs an give it a try.
Enjoy!
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Inventor Reps (Video Podcast Episode 24)
June 4, 2008 10:00 PMby Garin Gardiner
Discover how to use View Reps, LOD Reps and Positional Reps all inside of Inventor assemblies. We will cover all three areas from the assembly to drawings.
Zune - coming soon
Don't forget to leave feedback by adding a comment to this post or email me.2 Comments | Add CommentIn In the Machine > Podcast, Autodesk Inventor
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Using other file formats
June 2, 2008 11:22 AMby Garin GardinerIf you are anything like me, you don’t like to model things that you think have already been modeled. With the various 3D modelers out there, there are boat loads of 3D models that individuals have already created and are often available on the web with a little searching. Now with Inventor 2009, we have added additional support for other file formats to make this an even easier endeavor. Some of the additional formats you can now natively open inside of Inventor 2009 are Parasolid, Pro/Engineer, SolidWorks and UGS NX files.
This will open a lot of doors when looking for a specific part that you want to insert into your Inventor assembly. To take this one step farther, you can pull down the Feature Recognition tool out on Autodesk Labs to turn it into a feature rich part that you can then make modifications to. I used this exact process when I was in need of a small hinges that I didn’t want to model. With a quick search I was able to find a Pro/E assembly and bring it right into my Inventor model.
The next time you need a part that you don’t want to model do a quick Google search to see what you come up with. If any of you find good locations to pull down these types of parts, feel free to post a comment with the location.
Cheers,
Garin
1 Comment | Add CommentIn In the Machine > Tips, Autodesk Inventor
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