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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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Insert another belt
September 9, 2008, 05:16 PM Garin Gardiner
Often as I talk to Inventor users I ask if they use any of our Design Accelerators such as Belts, Gears, Shaft, Bearings or a plethora of other accelerators and find that most aren't even aware of these tools. Due to this I thought I would do a quick post of how to use the Belt Generator.
Design Accelerators tropically are created while in an assembly and by selecting Design Accelerator from the Panel Bar.
Since we want to create a belt I will select the V-Belt Generator and select the belt type I am interested in using (V-Belt DIN 2215).
From there I can select a plane to align the belt pulleys, specify an offset value and flip the direction if necessary. I can also determine if I want to use existing geometry for the pulleys or if I want to have the system build the pulleys for me. 
I am also able to select the type of placement such as enter coordinates, select geometry to constrain to, free drag and sliding positions for tensioning the belt. You will also get great indicators such as a red centerline for the belt letting you know if the belt isn't a standard belt length. I am also able to grab grips on the pulleys to change pulley dia (per standards) and change the pulley driving direction by selecting the arrow on the pulleys.Once I have all the pulleys in place and a green centerline I can make sure the belt is strong enough. 
By selecting the Calculation tab I can put in things like Power or Torque to ensure my belt will work. If I enter in about 1hp and run a calculation I will see a failure with this belt. 
If I go back to my design tab I can bump up the number of belts from 1 to 3 and see everything update. I can now go back to the Calculations tab and hit update to see that everything is now fine. From here I can select OK to create the belts and pulleys.
I hope for those of you that haven't tried some of these tools will be able to at least locate them and give them a spin. they can be very powerful tools.
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