Detailed Project (IPJ) Guide & Tutorial | Autodesk Inventor

hello and welcome to the next video in the invented tips and tricks series today we're going to be looking at inventor projects and the reason for that is I think a lot of people who are self-taught and just work on their own probably don't use projects and if they don't they can get into a bit of a mess and I'll explain why a bit later on well actually hopefully the reason why will become apparent a bit later on but it's a good idea just to give you guys a heads up on what projects are and why they're they use to you even if you work on your own so a project you'll find the projects area the projects dialog box when you boot inventor up this is in about a 2015 2016 is going to drop imminently but as far as another reason to much as very little new in the projects but very little has changed in them for a long time anyway and it's the button for it is up here on the on your panel bar so you go to the get started tab and then you've got projects yeah so click that and then you've got this right your projects list might look well the structure of it will be the same but you might have different projects listed here if you've never used projects the chances are you've just got default ticked and I'll explain what that is in a second the rest of the projects that you might see will be projects that have been just bundled in with inventor when you've installed it so what are they right will a project file and a project itself is a way for you to talent vendor where you're going to save your files the project tells an vendor where the files further job that you're working on are going to be stored so when you open up a drawing or an assembly it knows where to search for all the links to the drawings and the assemblies obviously an assembly let's just move the society there's an assembly here that assembly of the PC needs to know where the the case top is and needs to know where the metal bracket at the bottom is a nice nor the graphics core all those different parts and assemblies your top-level assembly needs to know where they are and you can't realistically expect an vendor to search your entire PC or if you're in an office the entire server or network to locate a file so you the project file gives Inventor this little umbrella region this little folder structure and it says right when I open up this assembly all my files to be underneath here and that here is your workspace area right that's the bones of what a project is and what it's for so if you are working on the default project there is no workspace so you're essentially using an vendor like AutoCAD or like Word or Excel there is no workspace at all you can save your files wherever you want you can drop them on your C drive your D Drive your reader either on a CD on wherever you want but the next time you open up your drawing on your assembly if inventor can't find a file because you might have moved it or renamed a folder it's going to fall a bit it's going to say I can't find this file resolve this link and you're going to have to manually find the files yourself which can take flipping ages so the default project is good in that it allows you a little bit of flexibility to save things wherever you want to but if things do get a bit funky then you could be in better bother trying to find files so that that's what the default projects for but we're not going to roll with the default project as we're bros around here we're going to use things properly so we're going to create a new project I'm going to show you how to make it and I want to show you how you set up the various bits and pieces in here these bits and pieces right these are the settings for the project file each project file has a bunch of settings pretty much uniform across all projects a lot of them you don't need to know about a lot of them are just legacy settings from a time gone by but there is some you know three or four settings in here which really do count and we need to we need to know what those are so what we're going to do is make a new project so when would you use a project will you use a project per job if you're working on a I don't know you're designing a product for company XYZ you'd create a project file for company XYZ and you'd save all the files for that project for that job whilst you working on that project file you might get another job come in for another customer you create another project file for that custom and you save the files in that project files workspace so you can keep your file separate or if you want to you can just have one project file for you and save your files underneath the one folder and then inventors still knows to search underneath that one folder so it's up to you how many project files you have that's entirely personal preference but you once you understand how they work then you can make that choice so what we're going to do is create in your project file so obviously you hit the new button here and you've got two types of project file we're not going to go here vault project is when you use in vault with inventor you create a project file you tell it's going to be a vault project file and then you've got additional settings to link that project file into a vault which we're not going to do that's another story for another day so we're going to keep and don't worry too much about the wording here this is bad terminology on Autodesk's behalf single user project doesn't mean that only one person can use it not at all single user simply means it's not a vault project so we're going to hit next and then you give your project a name so we're going to say this is just going to be called company eggs their company XYZ right but you can call it whatever you want you can call it the name of the actual design you're working on the name of the project file isn't timely it's up to you it doesn't matter the next bit is the most important bit it's the project workspace folder so this is where the project file itself is going to be it's where it's going to save it to and then it's going to also be the top-level folder in your workspace so all files that you create will be saved underneath this folder so you can then come to Windows Explorer go to a drive I don't know you can put on your C Drive or if you've got like an additional Drive like an e Drive you can say right well let's just create a new folder here call it company X Y Zed if you are working in an office this folder could be on a network so this could be on the S Drive or the T Drive you know and a lot of other people can then connect to that drive load the project file in and then everybody can then collaborate and save their files underneath the same folder so you've got you might have 10 people in one office if you do have 10 people in what obviously you really should use involved but if you do when you don't have volt ten people could load in the project file from this folder and then they're all save into the same folder so you could do that so there's our company X Y Zed fold and notice that it's empty at the moment so what we can do in the project workspace bit in the projects area is just hit the Browse button go to that II drive go to company XYZ and hit OK and then it's going to create a new project file called e company XYZ and then the project file itself has an IP J extension of the Shorin vendor project so that's where it's going to save it hit next this bit here is we don't really need to know about this at the moment this is if you've got standard library folders which you want to share across multiple projects so you might have and extra folders somewhere else on the network network which contains a lot of standard nuts and bolts and washers or you know standard parts from suppliers that you've brought in you can create a library folder somewhere else outside of your project area region and then invent will reference these one-off folders and it'll search those folders as well for files when you open up assemblies and drawings so we're not going to worry too much about those at the moment we just gonna hit finish and then that creates us our company XYZ project it takes it automatically the tick means that that project file is the active project another important point to note about projects is good or bad it's arguable you can only work on one project at a time and if you've got a file open in the background of inventor you can't switch between projects switching is just a double click or a right-click and you can't even actually double click so you can only do that whilst in vendors idle with no files open and you can only have one project ticked at a time so what that means in real terms is that if you are working on a project and you've got a file open you can't just suddenly say I'm going to open up a quick file from another company or another customers project and just switch projects and open it up you have to shoot what you what you working on down shut it all down and then activate the other project file and anything then you can do that ok go back to the other folder and you'll see now we've got company XYZ ipj listed underneath here and now you're free to create fought their thoughts you creative folder called parts or you know it's up to you how you structure these you can help you know assemblies parts assemblies and drawings and that's it you can now start saving your files underneath here so let's just test this out we've got company XYZ ticked and click done when I click open it'll now automatically default to that workspace folder so it doesn't default your My Documents folder then you have to go bollocks and browse you know browse to the folder where my files are no because we've got this project file active and inventor knows where the top level of the workspace is whenever you hit open whenever you hit save it's going to default to the workspace where your project file is located which makes things a lot easier so that's the that's the workspace in a nutshell really it's it's very simple it's quite a simple mythology behind it and it's it works quite well alright the settings that we've got under here a lot of them you don't need to worry about it's a single use a project that's the location of the project file included file doesn't matter style library let's I'm going to do another video on style library so we're just going to leave that for now but you can just leave it for now as read-only or you can if you want to change it to readwrite if you do plan on making changes to the style library so right click on it and change that setting the appearance library material IB right another benefit of having project files is that you can control the way inventor references material and texture libraries dependent on which project you're working on so you might if you're that kind of guy have emits a specific appearance texture library for a certain customer and you can load that appearance librarian just for this one project another project you might be using a whole different library all together with different textures and it different materials probably not though probably not in most cases you'll just have one central appearance library just one add material library and you'll use that across all project but that's where you would control it with in here so you can right click on here and you can add a library and that I'll then go and add a library from wherever its saved and then attach it so it will be used in this project sometimes you'll find people go out kind of finding materials of you know I'm working on something I can't find it it's not loading up the material library well and if the first point of call is usually to comment your project file just to make sure that the material library that you do want a reference is actually listed in here so that's the material and appearance library the workspace yeah you can just leave the workspace where it is you do tend to play around with this if you've got a vault project but we don't need to do anything about here the workspace is just a dot that just means the workspace is it's a relative path to the top level of where the project files save so your workspace is actually at the company XYZ if you wanted to have your workspace a couple of folders down you can right-click on here and then edit that and then you can see here visibly it is saying that's the that's where your workspace is but you can have it a couple of levels down if you want to okay alright libraries if we did add libraries in you that would be listed in here you can add additional paths additional paths would be like I said earlier would be folders which aren't in your workspace there's somewhere else on a server or on your computer and then when inventor opens up files it can reference these paths that you add when you're opening up assemblies and drawing so I'll scan those for additional parts which on in your workspace frequently use subfolders right this is actually quite a handy one frequently use of folders is when you're opening or saving actually million for opening unsaved it'll give you a shortcut to folders within your workspace that you use on a regular basis they're only really useful if you do have quite a big workspace so let's go into the company XYZ folder and let's say this is going to be enough standards or supply of parts something like that and frequently use subfolders you can say add a path out of path and then we can say browse to company XYZ supply a part and then for the name of it that's the actual path and then this is the name as it will appear in the left hand side panel of the open dialog box so we can just say it's going to be supplier parts and then we're going to add another one a path browse and then the other one was just standards and then we can just rename this one here to standards there we go such frequently used subfolders right the other really important area of your project file is the folder options the folder options is where you talent vendor where your templates are stored where your content center files are going to be saved to and where your style library is if you haven't changed anything from the defaults you can just leave those as they are but if you're working in an office this I cannot stress this enough if you're working in an office where more than one person is collaborating on a project under no circumstances leave this content center files option as default because when you use the content center and you place and not about the washer inventor will pull that file from the content center don't forget the content center is just a big database of numbers it will then model the bolt that you've asked for and it will save it in your My Documents folder which is great for you because when you open up the assembly that uses that bolt your PC you'll be able to find it because it's in your My Documents but Bob across the office opens up your assembly because it's saved on the network inventor is going to try and look to your my documents to open up that bolt and it Bob won't be able to see that bold because it's in your My Documents folder so you need to change this content center folder edit that and then change this to an area on the network really can't stress that enough so what I would suggest you do if you are working on a networked project file create a new folder under here and call it content center files Center with an re if you're in England and you spell it the right way well right click on here we'll go to edit and then we'll browse and then assuming that this ipj was on a network we can go in a company XYZ and then there you go whenever you create a nutball a washer it's going to save that into the folder within the workspace so everybody in the office will be able to reference those content center files now the templates and the style libraries you can if you want to again it's a video for another day but you can take a copy of your templates or you know you when you start a new file and you've got the list of I the I am and the IPTS and I DW you can copy that templates folder and put it on the network so everybody's using the same templates folder and the same goes for the style library if you hover your cursor over it it'll tell you where invent is looking for your style library new templates at the moment you can go to that folder shown there in the tooltip copy it put it on the network right click on here edit the path that it's looking for it and then change it to the path on the network that you've copied it to you can do that as well but if you don't do that it's just going to look for the styles and the templates on your PC again if you're in an if you're in an office where multiple people are using the same project you will have at this point the way it's set up now ten different people using styles and templates that are all on their PC so you don't have a centralized styles area in a centralized templates area but you like so you can copy the one on the network and sort that out options there's nothing too much to worry about in here the old versions is something which you some people it's personal preference old versions to keep on saved so what it does is it creates in your workspace we haven't got one yet but it'll create like an old visions there it is all versions folder and it will create like a backup whenever you save something it creates an old version of the file that you've saved and puts it in this old versions folder this setting here tells inventor how many old versions to keep one is obviously one old version you can increment that by up to whatever you want up there probably is a limit I'm not too sure it is - one is also just keep an old version of everything which is essentially a backup of everything or you can set that if you just don't want any old versions you can just edit that and say I don't want any old versions which is zero but if you're not using vault highly recommend that you save a setting of one or two just so you've got a backup in case anything does go wrong okay right the next thing we need to know about project files is content center libraries because the project file tells in vendor which content center libraries you're going to be using on this project now it tends not to pick and choose if you're using a content center you want to use all libraries but you know you can if you want to hit this button here which somehow vanishes graphically glitched but go to configure content center libraries and depending on whether you're using a vault server or the desktop content you can pick and choose so you can uncheck and say well what I'm using this project I don't want to use the mold libraries I'm not going to be interested in the JIS standards or the cost standards I'm just going to use the rest of them that tick click ok and then when now when you use the content center place on the content side it whilst you're using this project it's not going to reference any parts from the libraries that aren't ticked so you can you can control that as well ok that's pretty much it for project files hit save you might get a message like this to say it's going to be migrated have no idea why I've self just created it in 2015 is be migrated but never mind click done and now when we create a new file so we're just going to create a new part file and then we can just save it and what it'll do the save dialog box will automatically default to our company XYZ workspace notice on the left hand side we've got our frequent user folder so there's a supplier part their standards or you can jump back to the top level of the workspace and save your part in the parts folder and now whatever you do create assemblies and you create drawings in we'll always search for the links to those files and assemblies and drawings within this umbrella folder structure down here see Chris many folders as you want as long as they're underneath here another thing to note with project files as well if you do try and save something outside of your project file area so if you do just decide to be a complete renegade here and say right well okay I'm not going to save it under company XYZ I want to save my file to my desktop you're going to get this message here the selected location is not in the active project do you wish to continue to save that's inventive giving you a warning it's saying look son you've got to save your files in your workspace but I'm going to let you save it on the desktop but just be noted that it's not wise because if you do have a link or a reference to this file in a drawing I ain't going to find it on your desktop for you that's don't you it's on you here so do you want to do join a carry on be it on your own hair if you do so if you click yes it will let you open up and save that file to your desktop there it is but it's giving you the wall and it's saying I did warn you if you kind of find it later on it's your problem so I think that's pretty much it for projects the only other thing I really wanted to clarify is just when you do have a part open note is that you cannot change projects invent is going to say the active project cannot be there's the message is self-explanatory you don't really you know you sure you're intelligent bloke or woman if you'll notice what that message says what it means so you have to shut this down and go okay you know I want to change projects okay and then once you've got your file shut down it will let you change between projects so that's what projects are that's how you create them that's what they're all about so my next video I think as long as I can structure it properly is going to be a video on how to use the inventor style library I would read --it it how to modify it and just an explanation of how it works because it is a bit mind-boggling so that's it for projects thank you very much guys if you found that useful please BET's like on the video if you didn't pretty much dislike and put some comments down below hit subscribe don't forget to subscribe it helps me a lot and nail you up to a thousand way get in there Nelly Nelly as big as PewDiePie but thank you very much and until next time too

Channel: Tech3D

Views: 37,229

Keywords: Autodesk, Inventor, tips, training, guide, 3D, modelling, part, assembly, best practice, Solidworks, AutoCAD, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, project, projects, IPJ, Default

Id: kcl5fYnLZs4

Length: 20min 3sec (1203 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 04 2015