This Week's Two Minute Tip

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  This Week's Two Minute Tip
  May 26, 2009, 07:53 AM Rob Cohee

  Last week I was building out a data set with our resident Curtain Wall expert Brian Frank and I wanted to put in every detail I possibly could with this curtain panel assembly, including the ability to extract the length of each part. But there was a catch here – the length wasn’t the length of an extrusion or something I could dimension in the normal sort of dimensioning. No big deal, right?
  Now the reason for this technique is that I need to use a “From, To” extrusion when using the new iCopy tool on labs http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/inventor_icopy/ . So in order for me to create a cut list and extract length for each part I need to create a driven dimension and reference that dimension in a customized part list in a drawing file.

  So just like that two minutes turned into four, my how time flies when I’m rambling… [grin]

   

  -Rob

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Comments

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  May 26, 2009 02:53 PM Brian Hall

  What, What? :) Because my shop doesn't know how to read decimals into fractions, I take it a step further now, and right click on the parameter (after I've created it and checked it off for export) and click on "Custom Property Format". Then I'll convert the format to a fraction so that the "Length" parameter reads like a fraction in the parts list on the drawing. I will also project in some adjacent edges in the model using a 3D sketch so that I can extract cut angles as well.

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  May 26, 2009 03:36 PM Rob Cohee

  Great addition Brian - thank you!