Autodesk Inventor Tips and Tricks

so let's start with the session so my name is Norman Lloyd and I excuse it already in the front okay as you can hear I'm a German and maybe you will listen we have some strange accent and also some grammar mistakes but I think most important is of course that you get some tips and tricks for in went away from me so my son couldn't make it unfortunately so he's just on the agenda something about me so it's just most important for me in case I have spare time is food and sports however you name it but of course most important is the job so we are a team of eleven engineers and we will work on both sides that means on on the one side we are doing special design so for robot automation for plant design you see some examples below so these are real-life examples what we did actually for example this plant here has a size of about 40 million euros and it just starts with the production and on the other side we are doing consulting work and we started as you can see pretty early so with AutoCAD 12 so we're coming from a company called genius was acquired by Autodesk some hundred years ago at least I feel like this and yeah we started pretty early also of course to work in 3d what is very important for special machinery design I think because there it was 15 years ago where we started with the first things like called ad Tem DT all that stuff and today of course we have FD s plus we do also things like your calculation what you see today with the nostril in cat all that things because you have all these tasks when you're building special machines and you can't say ok I'm just concentrating on doing portions and I don't do anything with MEP or P&ID it comes all and we're a small company a garish company I call it and so we have to do what the customers are asking us so let's start we will have plenty of things for sure and I'm pretty aware of that you and repeat all the things right after that session but you have the download I updated it today so please reload the data again but you can follow that things and I think it's also important that you get an idea that there is something what probably can solve the problem you have next time and as I'm also a designer sometimes I have crashes hopefully not today and hopefully you won't laugh about it but you never know okay so let's step through because hopefully you will see plenty of things so just for for this document I'm using also some shortcuts in case you want to read it through so these are just there inside not to waste time one of my favorites are shortcuts in general so I'm traveling a lot I don't use a 3d mouse because it's easier of course with that and I think human being have two hands and they should use it because sometimes you'll see designers just sitting like this or not having at least the two hands the control key can do a lot and you will see during the session the different functions with that and in case normally either you tried with the right or the left mouse button just to get options functions and if not tried with the ctrl key because most of the time in case there is an option set to a function a you can switch it to function B with this not all the time but you will see afterwards so for example you want to position just a section few free anywhere instead of having cumbersome afterwards the rework of it just when you create a section few use the ctrl key but again we will see this plus all the other functions and I think for that the left hand is pretty perfect because you can touch all the things also the Shift key plus the mouse wheel to use the orbit and the last thing is just for all the Autodesk products let's say most of them today you have similar functions for the orbit for zoom so you find it in AutoCAD you find it in inventor you find it in nervous works wherever all the time perfectly adopted to this but most of the time okay so let's start sketch blocks who of you is using sketch blocks great so I think the first thing is better performance we will step through you have easier situations to copy elements and just to give you an example what that means we just go here inside and this is a real example of a customer so they are producing cooling systems and I have here two versions of it we just will see this here that you really can see the difference and this is the version the customer made and I only want to go here on the sketch and when I double-click nothing will happen so just to give you a time in case you want to change this it will take around 10 minutes to get the model out of it because it was done in a conventional way so they designed it in AutoCAD old versions they copied the sketch just from AutoCAD - inventor didn't do anything and then they ended up of course in performance trouble so you see it will take a long time so meanwhile we can have a look what you can do with sketch blocks so again it's easy to copy elements we will see this it's pretty fast with it and of course also when in case you're using AutoCAD blocks you can reuse them it's just one click when you use copy paste instead of just already position it just use the right mouse button because there is a menu in where you can define that you want to use it as the block is in AutoCAD and I think not all is bad from the past and sometimes in case you have problems with old data or you have mixed sketches you can help you with AutoCAD because AutoCAD offers some functions to close sketches pretty easy and to rework this pretty easy and sometimes this really helped so we will see an example and you can use also blocks for identical sketches for simulations we also have an example for that and also it's easy to reuse this in different sketches and what was also a nice thing in case you're using derive components normally you have problem in case you have a derived component because you can't clean up the original version in with blocks you can do so let's go back you see it's still running so and of course you can imagine how much time this will consume in case and we just wait for that until that we just have a look in AutoCAD because what I just told you is in case you have something your old data were the the sketch is not closed well you have the sketch dr. what can help you but sometimes it creates also the constraints and then you're in trouble because maybe you don't want to have this in the position it goes with inventor and for that you can use for example here good old AutoCAD so the hatch functionality offers some nice options when you go here inside because here you have an option to create a polyline just where you have for example a gap so I'm just using this functionality here and the other thing is I can define how large how big the gap can be so in case I had just set these two options and I said okay I want to get this here inside you see now it's closed and I can reuse this polyline pretty easy so the other thing I've just erased here because we only need the polyline another thing is in case you have AutoCAD mechanical there you have some enhancements inside for example a contour trace functionality and that means when we have for example here this plastic box oh you see meanwhile it does something see a pretty good performance okay so and you see when I move this now I have the contour I can reuse in AutoCAD in Inventor pretty easy just in case I'm creating a block out of it and I go here to a new drawing a new part a new sketch and now with copying in inside instead of placing it already I'm just using the right mouse button and here you see you have here the paste options and here you can define that AutoCAD blocks will be transformed automatically to inventor blocks pretty simple thing you should use of course I didn't create now one but at least to explain and then it's of course also easier to position it correctly on your sketch that you will have early on the zero point afterwards but let's go back to that one so we've seen it's pretty ugly to work with this so it's much more easier in case you're using this one because this has on the one hand it has different block elements inside and I just created here a parameter for the height and instead of waiting all that time I'll give you an example we just exchange this here from five millimeters to 15 and surprise surprise you see some seconds and I'm done I think this makes it pretty obvious use sketch blocks because they will perform better plus you can reuse them because you can create much more easier patterns okay so and the other advantage is when we go for example here inside of course you can use also the block functionality directly to rework it so you don't have to waste your time with looking for okay what is the background foreground what is about additional information of your part already you can concentrate on this block here so the AutoCAD we've seen let's talk about identical blocks what is the advantage so when we go here inside I have here a block created this frame and I want to reuse this to create a cell for robots afterwards so here we have the normal situation so no blocks inside just a basic sketch what I copy it on the different planes so when I go here in this sketch one and I change this to 3000 okay you see of course the other sketches even with copying them didn't follow okay so now let's do this here with the block and for that I think I'm using a really nice functionality because you can copy the sketch you go on your other planes and now you can paste this already here on it even multiple ones you see this is really nice and the thing is when I go now here inside my sketch and I modify this now maybe to four thousand and I just update this you see I'm done much easier faster and you reckon you really can rely on the results okay so let's go to another option and so what is you seen what is about in case you have derived components so this is an example so just some robot cells will go here to see on top so we have a skelet here inside well we have different sketches in and so in case I'm just opening here this sketch of my skeleton so with derived components I use this not only in this assembly but also of course in the parts here of this robot cells and when I go in for example to say okay I want to modify this one so here inside with my sketch different options you see I can change this to say this should be for example three thousands update all the things go back and get an update up so we are and of course due to the skeleton functionality all will follow this is the nice portion of course of having derived components with a skeleton but when we just open this component you see that of course here you have to derive component inside okay everybody aware of this so but here the good thing is I have a block inside so I will show you the difference let's go back to this one this is really just a normal one we also have here this link okay to the derive component and so in case what can you do you make a copy of that cell you want to reuse it for another project and you don't need any longer this link but normally you are getting in trouble because you can suppress you can break the link but you still still see this inside pretty ugly in case you are using here blocks inside you can go here inside you can break the link and you even can erase it and you are done so I think this is another advantage of using blocks okay so I think everybody is of course aware of the end of part I think so what can you do with that things on the one hand of course when we go here to this example you can move it around sometimes you have the situation unfortunately you created some things so for example that shelling and you see well this is of course a wrong move the hole and you want to move it and nothing will work okay so you can move it back wherever you want well the only thing is what really helps is in case you move first your end of part back you start here and you start your shell again four millimeters okay you move the end of part here to the hole and you are done so this is one nice portion of it the other thing is that you can use this also for example to reroute reduce the amount of data of a file so this is an example where we created just a dashboard for our car so some tools for it and the file size was about 23 megabytes and we had to send it to a colleague and just this is the funny part just moving the end of part here to the top from here up to see where it will reduce the amount of data don't ask about the details this is just having some temporary data behind but reality is now I'm it's possible for me to send it by email because it's pretty compact and then just a colleague has only one thing to do he goes here and says ok move it to the end again and he has the full functionality nothing changed the other thing it went through email ok so pretty straightforward I think so let's talk about sketches so there are of course a lot of functions inside and when we see this example here of this sketch and you create for example here a rectangle you have the problem that you can't get your parameters now inside because you don't see the symbols to get it it's pretty easy just key in the equal symbol and then you have the full access here to your parameters and you can say ok here in this case for example I'm using length don't use the return key now just you press the top button because then you can do the same also with the height key in the equal sign you can list your parameters take the height and you're done okay just a simple thing but it will help you the other thing is when you do measurement and by the way this works also for other dialogues you have also here directly accessed to the parameters and the values inside so in case you need sorts for example for measuring distance here that value you can mark it and copy it and reuse it pretty easy so as we just have this segment here inside so what kind of options do you have for example just to do a portion of it for the extrusion so when we go here inside you see well I can select here this rectangles but not the area in between well the cumbersome way will be of course just to trim or to break these points the easy thing is just to use point here just on it and what is the nice functionality in the latest release of inventor that you have even here a functionality for intersection so why do you use this or can you use this that's pretty easy in case you have a more complex part and you get access also two lines would come which come from your your model sometimes you have a weird situation and with this function you can say okay I need this line and I need this line and I get the intersection without zooming in and out okay so now when you start extrude of course now it works and the nice thing is you can keep your sketch and you don't have to break it up so another thing here inside sometimes yeah you don't have a horizontal vertical dimension so what can you do when we go back here to our sketch just have a look on that instead of using here the right mouse button menu just click a second time here on this line and then you have already this I mention it okay so now it will tell me that this is of course yeah over-constrained I will accept this and we come to another point so in case you want to reuse this so for example you will delete this one just go here with the right mouse button on it and you can here click on driven dimension and now it's available and you can drive your component really with this dimension okay so another thing is when you work on components is what is the fastest way for example really to get the center point here of a contour of an element for example for a hole afterwards for a screw connection and this you can do let's do this one here we go to the next one you can do this with the point functionality right mouse button and there is a loop select and the only thing you have to do is just move here on and you get the center of it you also can use it of course not only here for this areas but maybe for example also for other elements when you see you have an oblong hole for example there inside just to get the Center for your element pretty easy okay so this also works for slots so autodesk introduced the last versions a lot of new functions new features which ya should help us to get to be more productive to work easier and I just did I just checked what is really the the truth behind what will really work faster for you and the nice thing is that with the head-up display and hopefully everybody is aware of that you really have an advantage to work with not only that you can save clicks when you see the old style it's just when you like to modify the component we will write C after that you have the old style you have the freely grips you can use with the right mouse button you can use show dimensions and you can use that head-up display functionality and beside well it's only one click but of course when you do this 100 times a day this gives you additional time maybe for coffee or whatever but with this also you have the advantage that you see your elements because you don't have to waste the time to look up to look where is the command you really can concentrate on so when we take this example here and you like to modify it when you click on it you get already the information of course that you here you don't have to waste the time about where is the command you can go say ok this is my sketch and in case I want to want to modify something I'm ready and the right mouse button then I just either I select here some of that commands or I can select and directly to finish it and I'm done so it's really straightforward with the functions plus in case you're modifying something when we go for example like here you have normally here with the menu that ok and cancel already inside and I think you don't have to waste your time to remember all the commands what you have in this menu so there are thousands of commands inside but the only thing you should remember is when you draw a line down it's normally to go to the next level up and you have ok and cancel so ok on the right side cancel on the left side and you are done remember that three things and I think this will will will be really a great help for you ok so again just draw a line with the right mouse button and you're done and it's pretty fast so another thing is about working with work planes work features when you see for example in case you want to create here work plane just in the middle of that face behind and this one well you can do it with the functionality what is enhanced here but then you're struggling to get the right one a simple tip here behind is that just use the top view of it because here you see it will give me now feedback that already here there is another plane behind and I don't have to waste my time with selecting it I get it the other thing is okay how do you get a work plane on an existing face sometimes people are struggling with this I think the easiest way is to get it just when you click on the plane and click on a point you're done with this so you don't have to change for example the angle of some of the guys because to get first an angle where you have to modify then to ninety or zero degrees the other thing is that of course when you're here inside oops do it again you can just keep the left mouse button pressed and you just key in zero and you're also done but some more clicks I prefer the point then the other thing is in case you're working with work planes you should try to use oops let's go here you should try to use the functionality of the search options so in case for example here we have two planes inside they are invisible maybe half of course more inside how to get them visible back again and the thing just the normal search with ctrl + f will give you the possibility that you can go here inside and say okay for example this starts with area you have different options you can add this to the list you can find them now what did I do wrong oh thank you yeah thanks okay yeah so okay so begins with we can keep this area add to the list and now you have it and now you can say okay I want to have this visible back again and of course you can store these search functionalities for example to provide it to other users if you like to and oops I missed something in general of course it's good to use just the base planes for a good solid model just to build up your model just from XY or said Y whatever and have your different planes because in case you are deleting something in between and you you are relying on this work plane then you are in trouble but not when you start really from scratch from the base point with it so another thing here is when you're inside an assembly what is a faster way to copy elements and we go here to the next assembly so here I have a component and of course you can use copy paste with it but what is also nice is just and it's more it takes more time to explain than use it it's just select the element press the left mouse button drag it and you have it okay so pretty straightforward for positioning components of course you can use the new joints what I really like but you also have the options for example like using the Alt key for example you have here that screw and it's already somewhere inside you press here the key and you can say okay here is the point oops and it's inside pretty straightforward it's not only for center parts it's any kind of faces you can select and you also have the option in case for example you have you have different directions you prefer just use the spacebar just to change it to flip it if you like to you are coming to assemblies sometimes it can happen at least it happens for me maybe not for you but sometimes it happens that we get the wrong templates and you don't realize this just right in the beginning and for that I give you another example so for example I have that two components when you press the top key you get already the menu where you can create now here a new sub assembly with it and I'm just doing it wrong now I'm just creating here Welding assembly and now you have the problem that when you open this of course I don't want to use welding here inside so how can I change it back because you can't exchange like with sheet metal here the template well this is we don't need this this is nice because you only go here inside you select the components and as the the constraints are pretty stable with this because when you move components back in for that doesn't matter and I'm just moving them back I can erase this and selecting the components again and just selecting the right template and I'm done and the same of course also works in case you have from the factory design suite at the template because this happens sometimes people are working in the FDS with this template and they want to use it just as a normal assembly just go in a temporary sub main assembly position it there inside move the components out move it back then in the right template and you have the right result so another thing is when you work with with complex components assemblies and you have to assume a lot what kind of options can you use for that so the first thing for it when we go here to that one for example is that you have the possibility inside the fuse to create multiple windows of one component so you see here on the bottom and I'm just dragging it that we have this here inside and just moving here and you see now I can switch between that different views and not only switching of course but you also can use it for any kind of interaction so for extrusion for measuring the height whatever you want to do so when I go here inside and say okay I have this edge and I click to the other few and I want to have this edge and I don't have waste the time I have the fuse I want to use and I get more results so another thing is that with this functionality of the different views you can keep this information of course also for the next day because not only in in assemblies but also in parts you have now the option to store your fuse inside so when you go to a few so for example here inside you see I have different fuse were on the one hand I can have the rotation so it will store the camera position the only thing you have to take care about the master just takes the last camera position so in case you want to really have different camera positions create at least two fuse so the one thing is you can use this for the fuse and the other thing is you can use it for the visibility for example for planes because then you don't have to switch in the assembly your planes invisible because sometimes you need some sometimes not it's much faster and more efficient just go here inside and to use this one we'll just can click in between you see here I see all the work planes here I see only some because for the fuel I can store different kind of information so pretty interesting to use okay then another thing is in case you are using section fuse what you can use when you go here inside with the different options for example to say we want to use it here now you have the situation that I have here the section view and in case I'm creating now here on it a new sketch and I go to that and I'm using f7 so the combination of a section view and inside a sketch of f7 you see I can toggle between the different views because sometimes you need an edge just in front sometimes on the backside and with this you don't have to move it around it's just one click with f7 and you are done and the other advantage is in case you're using blocks what I talked about before in case you just want to concentrate on the sketch element just click the block here on top because then you have to just the pure information about your sketch and you don't get puzzled with the additional things okay so different things to use which make your life easier with inventor so I think I know a lot of people are using the 3d mouse who of you is using a 3d mouse yeah most of you nevertheless there are some functions inside maybe you also recognized so for example the navigation wheel and when you have the navigation wheel inside yep here we are this gives you some nice functions for example a rewind functionality where you have the different views all right when you use before and you can easily select the right one that by the way even works in 2d with AutoCAD this is also a nice tool because just move the back view sometimes you get lost okay so nice functionality here inside the other thing is here for example to modify the center you can do up here you just position it and then you have this as a center for your rotation there I know there are different options but sometimes it's more easier to use the function where you really can read what's going on okay then when we go back to this assembly a function that I really liked most is with the left mouse button here and shift you have all the options for the selection and this offers you a lot of options so the one thing what we find here inside I just want to rotate it like this so again we'll shift and left my right mouse button sorry you can switch between component priority and part priority component means in Inventor that these are parts and sub assemblies and when I just want to concentrate on a part I can select this and for example now I have this in the center for my orbit or I already can select this to open it okay plus what you also find there inside are additional options for example to select all occurrences you see now I have all that ply plates here inside I can use it so again saves time and you should have a look on these options here inside not only the part priority and in case you have really nested sup assemblies and you want to select one component you don't have to open each sub assembly you can go directly to that component to modified then we have another option here in this vacation wheel this is the function called walk and here I just simplified a layout of Factory I'm having here different kind of fuse and when we go here with walk oops this I didn't want to have so now you can walk through your company you can go around unfortunately it's not so convenient as the functionality in novice works okay I just skip it now but you normally can walk through move novice works it works better and uh I will show a little bit afterwards about novice works too but at least it's inside so for the zoom alternatives there are different kind of options normally of course you can use the mouse but nevertheless I think just will move orbit will shift the mouse wheel this is pretty interesting and in case you're working with AutoCAD and inventor you have on both sides the possibility to switch the direction of the mouse wheel it just depends on what you like more and you can go in the application options where you can set this button or an AutoCAD unfortunately it's under 3d modeling so not so easy to find for 2d guys but here inside you have also the option to switch it okay just as a beggar now for the representation of assemblies of components of course there are a different kind of options available so these are my favorite settings because this is just I think it's a nice balance between having a nice assembly nice visualization but they're having really a good performance of your elements and this is when we just go in here inside going back to that one when you go to fuel I prefer most the shaded with edges because then I can use the sketch the edges of my components shadows just using the mbn shadows and reflection on and just for the background to lights of course you can have different kind of backgrounds but hey I just want to do my design I have to finish my work and I can't play around but in case you want to do a modification here inside maybe just for a customer presentation you can use different ones you can introduce also your own data and plus you can play around with the size the lightning and so on if you have time to so there is another option meanwhile inside this is called ground plane and this will give you here the possibility to visualize also your ground sometimes that's interesting for creating pictures and you see here really the base another thing is when you have to do a lot of complex components is that you also can use different kind of information for example inside the assembly for the different components so when we go to that machine again you see I have a master fuel I have a standard situation for example where I just put this on clear I just selected here the material and just set it to clear that's all I set this here just to have parts invisible not suppressed ok because then you create a level of detail but only with the visibility or just to see details to have the camera to have to zoom on it and as this of course will remember when I go in I have a lot of options really to switch between these elements what I think is pretty convenient so another thing what we are using when we are just inside assemblies is just to show on one hand the component names after the joints the the constraints because then you really can change it modify because you know ok part a and B have for example the constraints for yeah for for a cylinder inside and when you're inside a part you should use also the option to show the in the extended information here that you get the information for example that this extrusion is about 40 millimeters okay and not just extrusion I think normally everybody has or should have a design handbook and should have a description in that you should name your features but to be honest also we have situation to where we don't do it because customers don't pay for nice drawings they pay for the results okay another thing you should have a look on is the functionality to see the transparency and when we go back to this machine and and just open it do you have this function here even here inside where you can have the transparency on and off and sometimes yeah at least we need the information of the other components in case we are working on a part and then it's good to see it like this or in case you want to have the transparency on there like this so we prefer in our company to set then the style of the lines to a different color to make it more obvious that these are the components which are not active and all the things you can do here inside the settings for the few appearance II turns and here you see the options with some definitions how you can set this but of course it's completely up to you and again use this saved fuse because they will save you a lot of time in case you'd start tomorrow with this assembly so we've seen already something about the search and you of course you can use this also inside your assembly so just an example I think we're a little bit in trouble of the time I just show this slide now it's just you can set for example for components which parts are visible which are not visible and to get them for the selection just to say okay now I want to change this so there are plenty of options here inside you can use and again the search you can use this also for your here inside I described where you normally find it inside the registry it's just a copy and paste for the registry if you like to work with these things so another advantage of using different kind of hues is that when you create a drawing out of this and we just do this here with this example just go here create drawing and take the top one and when you take the overlay functionality and then you have the full access of course on the one hand here to the positional representations like say okay open closed but also to the different views okay so just to say you only want to see the grippers and you want to have this in this style and then you get for example just the the gripper elements you can also use this without even even having any kind of open or close situation so for example you want to see a sticker on so we had this situation the customer wanted to have the sticker and what is the efficient way to get it done and it's pretty easy just to create one few where you see all your components the second few where you only see your sticker and then create just a dummy positional view just a dummy one it has the same position because then you can use overlay which brings on one hand just for example this controller inside and on the other hand just the sticker with the colors so pretty nice functionality to use this so another thing I wanted to talk about is what kind of possibilities do you have to control assembly angles so on the one hand of course you have the standardized version where you have an undirected angle unfortunately undirected angle means that in case you define something to say okay 0 to 30 degrees it can flip okay very important for that is and it's fortunately it's shown on on the symbol but people don't realize this the vectors should show both for component a and B in the same direction as you can see here so don't use it on the plate side just use it in the direction that both vectors show like this this also works of course for the new joints by the way and then you have to direct Anil this is a nice functionality but unfortunately you don't have any kind of limits so plus minus 30 degrees doesn't work with this in this way okay well with the new joints you have all that combined I think it's it's fast it's easy to use the only thing is well you don't see on your drawing on your assembly what kind of angle do you have already and for that I just created a simple example with a skeleton I like to show you because there I like to show you also some other enhancements how you can control the definition with a kind of slider just out of the illogic functionality so now let's go here to we are and the thing is so you see with this skeleton I see already inside my assembly what's going on you don't need this all the time for sure but in case you need it you have a visual feedback with this and the nice thing is when you want to have this really as a mobile system you can create here an eye logic rule to say okay this should be the angle just a second here we are and now you have full access to all the or almost full access to all the information outside of your assembly and so we have here the user parameter this is the angle sorry about the German and you one can go in inside your skeleton and you have also here your parameters and the only thing you see I don't have to keep anything in I just using the right mouse button I'm capturing the current situation and saying okay the parameter inside my skeleton should follow the value of this parameter what I'm using in my assembly okay you see nothing else and when I update this so the angle the parameter was set to 30 degrees and I'm done now but of course this is not the full story so we want to use here a nice dialogue and so for that we just create here a slider I know and the only thing I have to do here to say okay I have this angle and I want to use this knob of a text box but just with a slider and for the properties this should go from 0 to 30 degrees okay and when you just go here inside now I can use this not to say that you have to use this all the time but sometimes in case you have more complex geometry you want to see how it's moving I think this is pretty nice and it's fast and you don't have to key something in as we just talked about the parameters I think the nice portion inside the parameters today is that you can use filters unfortunately this is also the bad story because in case you're using filters it's set also for the next assembly or the next component and when you open this one and you miss some parameters most of the time it's because you set already a filter before just have a look on that and when you use key parameters just make sure that this flag is active so just to remember sometimes people have problems with parameters because can't use it because then the functionalities say it's red and it doesn't work so in case I have a parameter L but I used it with ten millimeters and when you want to use it for the function Rho it doesn't use it because it has the millimeters inside so the easiest way to solve this is just divided by one because one will bring millimeters with it and millimeters divided by millimeters is nothing okay so there are some other nice interesting functions inside Inventor so in case for example you have not a perfect value but you need this for a row you have here the floor or seal around functionality I don't want to waste our time to see all the details you find it in the paper in case you need it you can go inside let's talk about LEDs level of details so level of details are a pretty powerful functionality but when we have a look here on so to see yep the master for example of this component I created here a level of detail already the nice thing is with the productivity functionality what you see here inside under assemble you have the possibility to link the level of details so imagine I have different sub assemblies here inside and I created already inside these sub assemblies level of details and the good thing is to define this already in templates to have at least one sub assembly a 1l LOD for example to say this is rough and everybody is using it because then you can go in here no click the wrong one here we are and you can say okay I want to live I want to link any of the sub assemblies with the existing level of detail of this name together and then all Elodie's are together in one click who of you is working with Elodie's yeah so this is a nice part of this unfortunately when you work with LEDs most of the time of course at least I for my own I don't use my Elodie's because this is just for my colleague at least for this assembly I have the problem when I do any kind of modification here inside for example to say I have this component and I change here for example the extrusion to 300 things well my master is perfect but the LOD is not OK everybody I think is aware of who is using LEDs so now it's pretty cumbersome I have to go into my Elodie's I have to update them well at least we have a functionality here inside to update the substitute but it's work and sometimes you even don't know that there is a new version of it so what we are doing pretty easy here inside we are just creating for each project just a fake assembly so this is just a temporary assembly where we put in all substitutes because in case there is a change here inside I can go here to the functionality and you see it will tell me hey there is an update and then it's updated and then also all the LEDs what I'm using also the one in the assembly before are updated and you don't have to waste your time with looking back and for what's going on with your allergies so pretty straightforward to use that so for collisions just here you you can read it afterwards in case you want to check collisions inside inventor you have the situation that you can set a define a set one and two to check a collision but sometimes you don't know where the collision is and then it's easy just select all the components in the sector in the set one because then it will check also the interferences inside and you get all interferences in case you have there for example screws inside use the search again to filter them out not to have them inside because of course they will create already here this situation that you have then an intersection inside and for the search just I put it here inside not only to use of course the center parts but maybe for for example or use also to use parts you purchased if you like to well in case you have a collision you can use inside the assembly the copy object functionality so you're inside an assembly you'll just modify the component use the copy object then you can use the geometry from the component which causes this collision and then you can with use combine and then you can optimize your component pretty simple pretty straightforward okay so as we just talked about this before of course there are much more functions in all that Suites and today we have in most of the Suites also novice works in case you have novice works managed you also have an option to check collisions who used already novice works some I think think who has it or who knows okay more I have I can tell you use it we are using it specifically for plant design because then we are getting different data from different offices there is no other way to bring the data together but just even for normal situations you can use it here inside you can check your collisions and I just described it here inside in a pretty easy way so with these steps you can repeat it by your own you can go inside with your assembly novice works it will open it once save it then in a compressed format and then you can go to a clash detective you select ok I have now assembly a assembly P or just want to check all and then you get a history that means you can define ok this collision came from last time or this is already known or this collision has to go to the colleague that he has to do the modifications afterwards and in case you're doing an update of your assembly and inventor you can also do an update inside novice works with this so pretty straightforward easy you don't have to see all the functionality of novice works but just try this one feature ok so coming to section fuse and I think then we are good in time for drawings so there are different things inside what I want to tell you so the one thing what I just talked about before and here we are three yeah when we have a look on that drawing in case you create section fuse when we do a section fuel for example through that and I'm just creating here just this one you see now you get it in this and normally you in position the first you break the link just press the control key and you can move it around okay so pretty easy so the other thing is in case you have a section fuel and you have symmetrical parts avoid with symmetrical parts to extend your line in a horizontal or vertical way like this because the result is and this is a real custom example the customer told me hey there is something wrong there is a buck in inventor because for the same dimension I get here 20 millimeters and 23.5 and guess what it's just because well it's correct because it takes here the complete length of the section fuel and maybe you end up with some trouble when you manufacture this component so the other thing is that you can reuse sketches from your model and dimensions from your model and for that you normally when you go in and you just close this one here and we go to that one that few and as you have this you have different options inside so you can create out of this for example the sections you can here you can get the model sketches out of this whatever you want to have here inside so different options to use the only thing you have to make sure that your sketch is also visible inside your component that means well I can click on that to get the models sketches but now thing happens for that you have to go back and for example when we take this one here and we just set it here to share oh it's already here then it even should come here on that one display reference oops okay sorry I don't know what happens now okay normally it's just make sure that it's also visible inside your component and then you can use it in case you switch already inside the drawing to see it and you go back to your component you just have to update it in your drawing the other thing is that you also can reuse the mentions and I think of course I know most of the time the the dimensions inside the component are weird so anywhere but what you can do with your dimensions when you're inside such a component you can use also the repositioning that you get it automatically on the same position that at least say 80% of the work is done and as you have different kind of options here for the selection to get the dimensions which come from the model which come from your drawing you guys also have selections to say I'm just want to select the dimensions from the model for repositioning them so pretty straightforward so we are almost out of time I'm just stepping through some of the important things who of you is using dimensions like this ok so I have all the time a hard time of that and just we do this as a large last one and normally well there are options that you can go in and with right mouse button you go to the options forget it the easiest way to do that is just position a dimension like this go here on your thing oops and just drag this one here touch your lines and you see then you get this position and you don't have to think about all that rice right mouse button things because then you get it pretty straightforward and don't waste your time okay copy paste symbols you have different options here inside so I have plenty of other stuff they're inside sorry we're running out of time with that I think as you can see there is plenty of stuff inside in Inventor what you can use to make your life more easier you only have to try it if you have any questions so also there is my email inside and please don't forget to vote for this session afterwards and in case you have any questions please let me know I'm available thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Civil CAD Tutorials

Views: 5,530

Keywords: Autodesk Inventor Tips and Tricks

Id: h5rHIwlbua8

Length: 64min 12sec (3852 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2019