Custom Frame Members for Frame Generator

in this video we're gonna take a quick look at the process for authoring and publishing custom frame members to use within Venters frame generator now I'm going to work through this entire process and we need to start at the beginning it's very important before you begin this process to check your project file and make sure that you have a read/write library available I'm going to click on my project button and down here on the side of the project dialog box I'm gonna select this button here and expand it this shows me a list of all of my libraries and I want you to notice I actually have a readwrite library called testing listed right here if you don't have one you can simply click this button and create your own library so let's get started by creating our own custom profile to use with the frame generator I've opened up a new part this is going to be in English or inch based art for this example and I'm simply going to generate a flat bar with some chamfers on it so I'm gonna use my chamfer tool I'm gonna set up a parameter here for the chamfer value so chamfer equals 1.125 and I'm going to add the chamfers at each corner now I want to make sure my profile is centered at zero so I'm going to add a vertical constraint between the center point and the midpoint there and a horizontal constraint here now I need to add the dimensions that are going to control the width and the thickness of my member so let's start a dimension we're gonna go from this edge to this edge we'll set this up to be width equals 4 that'll be my default value and then from this line this line will represent the thickness so I'll type in thk equals 1 so there is our custom profile I'm almost finished generating the initial shape I want to do an extrusion and while I'm doing the extrusion I'm actually going to use a parameter called length I'm going to set that equal to one inch so that is the general shape I want to use as my custom profile inside a frame generator now I'm going to go ahead and save this I'm gonna call it flat bar chamfer and I overwrite the one I have done already now there are three different versions that I want to include so I can pick three different sizes while I'm using the frame generator and in order to do that I need to convert this to an eye part on the manage tab I'm gonna go over and select the create eye part command and you can see the naming of the parts come in automatically along with any named parameter now I'm going to right click and select two more rows here and the first thing I'm going to do is modify the names so we're gonna go with four by one when you modify the first one you'll get that warning and you want to modify the member and the part number and then we want to do the same thing for the next two this is going to be three by one and finally two by one definitely want to make sure to modify the width parameter for this so that one's going to be three this one's going to be two so I'll click OK and then over in the browser the table appears and you want to take the opportunity to test these and make sure you get the desired result so I'm simply double clicking on each version and I'll set it back to four by one and again we want to save the component now I want to begin the process of authoring the structural shape on the author panel on the manage tab author panel I'm going to use the flyout and use the structural shape option this is basically a wizard that'll help me set up my part so that it becomes the correct model to use inside a frame generator for my category in this example I'm just going to choose other and it's just going to use the base extrusion by default and the center of the profile will always be set up by default as well now I want to be able to notch this so I'm gonna select knotch and pick that first profile that we did earlier on the parameter mapping tab we're gonna keep this as simple as I can I just want to track the length in this case so for base length I'm going to come over and select the length option I named earlier now if I click OK I'm going to click OK here you could click publish now but really the big difference here is that the part is remodeled with a specific start plane and end plane and an extrusion that passes between the two now to actually publish it I'm gonna start the command again and in this in this example I'm gonna come down and select publish now this actually starts the publishing process and I am going to send this to my readwrite library that I mentioned earlier well click Next again it's already set up for me that basically made all these choices so we'll click Next again it's already setup with the length moving out to the base length and then I get to this option in the dialog this is how I want to be able to choose the members when I'm placing them in with the frame generator and I actually want to choose them by the member name so I'm just gonna bring that over we'll click Next and the categories here for the family name the family description I'm simply going to copy that and paste it so that it basically says the same thing over and over and I will put in my company name for the manufacturer now I've already published this one time so I'm going to close this and let's take a look at how we can use our frame member now I have a simple assembly with a skeletal frame sitting on the main plane and I'm going to use the frame generator I'm going to insert my frame you can actually see that the flat bar chamfer is now available in the list for me and if I go to the size I can choose any one of the sizes I mentioned are created earlier so I'm just going to come in and select all of these lines I'll click OK and basically let the tool create those bars for me and then this is just a basic frame generator exercise I can go in and miter the corners and we can notch out the middle bar in way of the end bars if I were to double-click this middle bar I could zoom in and see that it is not just perfectly in way of that bar now there is another way that you can actually generate custom members to use with your frame generator let's say for instance you need a special size of an existing member that doesn't exist in the standard category let's take a look at that process next I'm going to close this file and our previous file and again on my project panel I want to make sure that my active project does have a readwrite library so it's very important that that happens and again in this case it is my testing library so I'll click OK there now on the tools panel I'm actually going to choose the content center editor I actually want to go in and modify one of the square tubes here so here is my ANSI square tube and I want to create one that has some custom sizes now to do that I simply right-click on this and select save copy as now I'm gonna save it to my testing library and I'm going to call it custom square tube place that dere it's gonna be independent of the other one will click okay and here's my custom square tube in my training or my testing library now I want to modify the sizes here so I'm gonna right click on it and I'm going to go to the family table now everything in here these are the what I want to do here is actually create some smaller tubes the smallest tube here is two by two by 3/16 so I'm gonna take everything in here except for that very first one and delete it don't need those things so we'll go ahead and delete those now I'm gonna try to do this as quickly as possible just as this example but I am gonna change the designation here to one by one by 3/16 I'm gonna modify the height that's gonna be 1 and the width basically we're just editing the Excel spreadsheet here and I'm gonna leave everything else in place if you're doing this in production though you're gonna want to come in and create the correct radius value to put that in place and you're also gonna want to calculate the mass pounds per foot for the actual part you have to do those calculations and fill them out but everything else here should update automatically now I'm gonna click the apply button it is possible to copy this so I can right click on the row copy and paste it or add another row and have it copy the row down to the other but in this case this is the only custom shape that I need so I'm just gonna select okay I'll click done now I want to open up that base frame that we were using earlier and we're gonna test our new size in the frame generator inside of this design so I'm gonna go back over and start the frame generator and in this case I want to make sure that I set my standard to ANSI that's where I started and then then the family if I come down and look I'll actually see this option right here at custom square tube that we created there's only one size but I do have to select it and then I can come in and add these bars again very clean and of course I can miter these just like we did in the previous example so this is going to conclude our demonstration for authoring and publishing custom frame numbers if you have any questions about this presentation please feel free to contact your local imaginate technologies support representative

Channel: 3DAllDayEveryDay

Views: 89,946

Keywords: Autodesk, Inventor, Frame, Generator, Custom, Profiles, Members

Id: YgnHHQ0aRrY

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Fri May 04 2012