Quickly Use AutoCAD Sketches!

Comments

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  September 13, 2007 08:33 PM Glenn Stone

  good tip on fixing position after Auto Dimensioning

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  October 12, 2007 10:45 PM Stewart Long

  I have been using this method for a long time except retaining the centre point and then using the move command to the centre piont so that my part will have symetric axies. Then autoconstraining last. I agree this a poor way to model but does save time when reproducing from 2D drawings. The problem I have found is that the sketch imports as imperial regardless of whether the part or the 2D drawing it was copied from is metric. When using large parts with close tollerances this creates about half a millimetre error. I have tired to change the import format but have had no success, any ideas?

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  July 14, 2008 03:47 AM Patrick Baumann

  That's a possibility but I would consider it as a work around. It is really a main point that inventor improves all the sketch features and functions. There is a lot of tedious and timely work in everyday sketching.

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  July 14, 2008 08:25 AM John Hackney

  Stewart The units problem can be solved by starting with the template of the units you want to end up with. During the "import" you can specify the units of the sketch. Lets say your drawing is in millimeters and your Inventor template is in inches. During the import specify millimeter as the units and the units will be automatically converted to the units of the template, inches. This will not work with cut and paste.

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  July 14, 2008 10:57 AM Will Zeober

  Your definition of “complex profile” is relative to…..? Copy and paste from AutoCAD is great for those who work with a lot of basic descriptive geometry. Certainly it may be a “complex profile” but typically it can be constrained with a couple of dimensions at each control point, but what about the spline? I am talking about the spline with many control points necessary to replicate a curve where it is not practical (or applicable) to use mathematical functions to define parameters. Many of my surfaces begin with a point cloud scan of an original object than converted to a spline with many control points per inch to preserve the original curvature. Working in AutoCAD is one thing, but Inventor is another story. Then there is the move command. Moving a heavy spline within Inventor to the popular center point (as it relates to the actual parts x0,y0) is taxing on resources and I am not confident that the integrity of the spline is preserved during the move and much of the time the PC hangs up or stops responding. One “work around” is to “copy” the spline during the “move” than delete the original. For some odd reason this works faster than “move”. Has anyone had this experience or want to share more information?

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  July 14, 2008 01:29 PM Stefaan Boel

  @ will: Isn't it better to first move the AutocAD sketch to the 0,0,0 point before copying it to Inventor, I didn't retry it but I always thought that in Inventor it would turn out @ the right position as you defined it in AutoCAD...

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  July 14, 2008 02:15 PM Jon Oellrich

  Stefaan, that doesn't happen with copy/paste, since the geometry drops in where you click in Inventor. I have had the experience you describe, Will...I believe it happens that way because with copy the constraints are not considered at the same stage and this seems to avoid a lot of confusion. I generally use copy/delete if I'm using move just for that reason.

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  July 16, 2008 10:25 AM Chris Huminski

  I tried all these things, and find that aip is such a resource hog that it's worthless trying to do such a thing. For example, I build all my surfaces in McNeel's Rhino, b/c aip doesn't have the sophistication to do even the the basic kind of surfacing that I do. One of the big areas i tried using this aip 'work-around' is with vendor/purchase parts (dwg files downloaded from the mfgr's web sites). In all cases I've found, the geometry is full of fillets, rounds, and chamfers, which consums system resources. To edit-out all that junk is a waste of time. To use 'autodim' is equally a waste of time (b/c it doesn't reduce the complex geometry, but merely adds to it). I've worked this 'work-around' as thoroughly as possible, and discovered it's easier to build my own simplified model from scratch in aip, instead of using an imported autocad dwg (unless it's very simple and basic). The end result is: I found this work-around to be useful for only simple sketeches, b/c it's too resource hogging to do it to any degree of complexity. But if i'm going to use it for only simple dwg's, then in order to prevent waste of time, I just build from scratch. Hey, let's be realistic about this, and admit it's a bad work-around for another solution that we don't yet have from autodesk. Cheers ... ChrisH

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  September 30, 2008 12:13 PM Paul Cetnar

  Chris, let's also be realistic and not expect a 'magic wand' tool to do all of our work for us.