Getting started guide to editing the content center | Autodesk Inventor

welcome to advantage EPS tricks and tutorials is a tip as a trick or is it a tutorial I don't know it just say all three two covers all bases do you know what I mean we look at a content center editing basic level beginner level if you're that guy that needs to know the intricacies and go balls deep into parameter mapping and making it sing do top dances and cook you dinner for you it's not gonna be that it's beginner's stuff setting expectations from the start and what is content and editing well the content center is is about placing these things here like bolts and washers and nuts and fasteners but everything by default off the standard libraries is read-only you can't change it you can't add your stuff to it you can't put your own part numbers in so what you need to do is then make your own library and then copy stuff from the standard stuff into your own library and then change it and it's a bit fiddly so I figured we'll do a very quick beginner's guide quick being the optimum word here because of Internet and its attention span so wouldn't it do a bit of prep first and I'm hoping that all of this prep work is stuff which kind of neat you kind of already know because each one of the bits of prep work is a topic in its own right so where do you stop I don't know but we're gonna look at our projects first so we're gonna create a new project and the new project is going to go on my C Drive now this is assuming that you're a guy working on your own in with a laptop in a shed or any bedroom doing a university work or College work if you're from America or it's not really meant for people that I use in Vault or if you work in a drawing office but hope again hopefully you kind of understand that bit but we're gonna make a new folder this is where we're gonna save all of our project work so we're gonna call this like my project something up that's my project folder and then that's what I'm gonna save all the stuff so we're gonna create a new project and in vendor I'm gonna make a single user project I'm going to call it my project and then for the project workspace folder we're gonna browse to my C Drive and then stick the project in there and then finish right once that's done if you've got a folder options you've got content center files now I said this in my installation video for making for installing the contents in it the content center itself is just a bunch of libraries right it's just a bunch of numbers when you make a bolt it then models an IP T for you and then sticks it in a folder out of the content center but that's why it's called contents and files and by default it sticks that meaning my documents folder which is that folder there which is fine that's where everything is going to go for all the projects but you can have a unique content center files folder per project if you want just by clicking in there and then for example putting dark backslash content to send ER from murica files and then that is a relative path it's relative to just save and then yes or not that's relative to your location for your project so if you go back over to here and then in my project comments enter files that's where all the nuts and bolts are gonna go that's most of the prep work done I've got the project file set up that's where the nuts and bolts are gonna be stored will now need to make our library files so just to make sure that everything is tickety-boo and that everything's working go to I the top then options go to the contents at the top and you should have a desktop content this video is gauged to desktop content enough of also though we're not doing vault service stuff here not today just copy that to the clipboard that path go to Windows Explorer paste it into there press return and you should see a bunch of ID CL files if you don't check out my historical videos and then look at the installing the content center video and then do it because you need these so these ones here everything's starting with AI 2060 this is all read-only stuff this is the stuff we can't change we need to make our own library how do we do it right I'm gonna come back and close this go to projects again and then this button here click that and then you should see invent a desktop content at the topic location of the libraries here don't worry about the red ones the red ones you can just don't tick those they're the libraries that you can use but they're not installed like mold stuff which we're not interested in so we don't need to care about those and when I click this button here which is create a library and then I'm gonna call the library you can call it whatever you want you can call it my library can call it jim's library Ted's library I'm gonna call it and then okay I'm not and that creates us a read/write library note the other ones are read-only this is real right cuz we're gonna write you in the witness we're gonna do OK on that and we're gonna done on that and then yes gonna say yes to that and then when you go back over to that folder where all the libraries are you should see your library in there looking rather small lonely because it's empty that's good it should be empty because there's no tin it right that's the prep work done where I did it now do some editing so the whole point of editing is you take a thing a bolt of washer or whatever from any one of these libraries you copy it into here where you can edit it the nature of the edits depends on what it is you want to do you might want to make a new size you might have m10 by a hundred bolt but you might want an m10 by 120 or you might want to put your own partners into the bolts that are already there there's a whole there's loads of different reasons why you could want to be editing something I kind of cover them all but you'll know yourself what you want to do and hopefully this is the guide that you need to be able to do it okay so we need to start editing the content center how to do that well when invent is idle and there's nowt going on if you click the tools tab here content center editor if you've got something open normally an assembly go to the manage tab editor that's where it is so we're gonna click that and then you presented with this scary-looking dialog box which most people have one yeah yeah I get that I get that but it's kind of its kind of makes sense when you break it all down on the left hand side this is the category view so these are all the different nuts and bolts and different you know everything in the contents and it have been a categories so you've got like hex head bolts you've got set screws you've got washers plane washers so everything is categorized now the reason there's so many of them is because we're using our project file currently uses all of these libraries so each one of these libraries has their own plane washers there's washers in this one as washes in this one blah blah blah blah blah and by default you're looking at all of the washers in all of those libraries in one view now if you don't give a monkey's about like unsee stuff or Japanese stuff and German stuff you might just want to look at ISO stuff so in the library view drop-down here you can go and then you can go to ISO stuff and it just shows you the washers that are in the ISO library and then that sticks and then you can go to hex head bolt and I'm just looking at ISO stuff it's a lot more manageable than looking at everything combined which is what that is when you're looking at merged view it's all the libraries merge together but we're not caring about that we just want to look at ISO stuff right so that's what everything is on the left hand side categories right-hand sides all the bolts and stuff if you have this preview pane switched on down here which I believe is family preview that one there the family preview is when you click a bolt or washer or anything this just shows you what it's made up of so for that bolt each one of these rows is a potential IPT and there's the one hundreds of them and sometimes in some cases there's thousands of them per each one of these different standards but each one of these rows defines a dimension different diameter at different length a different thread size for that particular bolt so it's a potential IPT per row that's the family table imagine how much work it was making all this one right so we need to make our own now if you've got the library view and then you select TFI library or whatever library you've got it's empty that's good it should be empty so we're gonna go back over to the ISO library and we're at the point now where we can create our own now there's a number of different ways you can do this now I'm gonna make a copy of this one here ISO 476 - it's a socket head cap screw I want to add a new size into it and change couple of part numbers and stuff how do I do that it's easy like I said there's a number of different ways of doing it and people have probably gauged Arduino a better way of doing it tonight doing it differently you might do it a different way this is the way I'm showing you if you've got a better way doing it do your own video what you use right click on it and then you go to save copy as now when you select save copy as it's gonna create a copy of that entire bolt all of its different rows and stuff and it's gonna save it into your library is an independent family which means there's no link back to the original if you want a link back to the original you can keep a link back to the original that's up to you but I like preferably preferably prop your prayer preferably up I like having an infinite in independent family so it's completely separate family name well that's up to you depends what you're copying depends what you want to call it you can put your company name here TFI ISO 476 - family description that's the descript by the way just by the way this is the description that will end up in your IPT which will end up in your parts list which will end up in your bombs which will end up on your drawings so you can put your own description in here if you want to change it a little bit you can do that and then go to review click review and in here what we're gonna do is we're going to select this cell here and then for the expression this is the expression that makes up the actual file name of the bolts once you've placed them and you don't want the words copy off in your file names so we're gonna put CFI in there we're gonna click this one here and then we're gonna select this and I'm gonna go T by and then we're gonna select out of it and these three rows here are a preview of what will happen when you make a bolt from your new library part it's gonna be the file name is going to be TFI ISO four seven six two so you can change this if you want if you don't want the standard name in the file name you can delete out expressions and you can have just TFI - m one point six by two point five you might not even want I saw at the end of it you can get sure of that if you want just remove it it's up to you entirely up to you what you were doing is but you can change the expressions to suit and this here these three rows are a preview of what your edits to this top cell will do to the fine result click ok click ok it then Boosh copy suck poof puts it in the TFI library then we can drop this down we can go to TFI library there it is so we've now got our own category fasteners bolts socket head screws and there's our TFI bolt ready to be edited oh right some edits we can do from here if you right-click on it and go to the family properties you can make tiny adjustments to the family name which what happens what appears there to the description don't forget that's what appears in your part in the actual ID property description so you can just call this if you don't want hexagon socket head cap screw in there you can just hide you can just have hexagon head cap screw whatever you can put whatever you want in there click OK and then for the family table right this is where we start to make edits to the actual files right to the actual bolt itself we've got to go into the family table this here is just a preview by the way you can't actually edit it from you right-click family table and it brings up another scary-looking excel type a rolling column grid setup so all the rows these are all the rolls that make up the bolts so for example if we scroll down we can find m10 so that one there is an M 10 by 16 chakra head cap screw this one here is an M 10 by a hundred socket head cap screw the rest of the numbers you can see that the column headers so that number there is the thread length that there is the head height you don't necessarily need to change any of these unless you make in a dramatically different sized bolt and you need to change some of these to suit so to make your own row so say for example we want an M 10 by 120 that doesn't exist it goes from M it goes to M 10 by a hundred and then the next size is an M 12 by 20 so we won an M 10 by 120 what you do is right click on that and then copy that right click again add a row right click again paste come to the cell that defines the differential which is going to be the length we want M 10 by 120 take that out put in 120 because the rest of the row most of the rest of the row is parameter driven if you scroll along to the right you can see it's updated things like the designation it's updated the it should update the part number automatically as well which is or on the file name so if you just expand that column a bit the file name will be TFI iso four seven six to m10 by 120 and part numbers should be the same m10 by 120 so the rest of the columns should update depending on your nominal length because it's kind of a key column it's one of the driving factors is one of the biggest differentials between all the different rows so that should update to suit if you make in something different like m10 by 200 things like the thread length you know the thread diameter should stay the same because it's an m10 but you might need to change some of the other properties to suit the best thing to do and you might be able to figure this out yourself but if you were to do m10 by 200 is to scroll down to another size which has got a 200 like this one here and then look at the other thread like let's see the thread length is 52 instead of 30 something you might might want to tinker that a little bit to suit it depends it depends once you place the ball the new 1m 10 by 200 it might just not physically model because other dimensions might need change but you kind of have to just do a bit of trial and error with that but there's our m10 by 120 I think that's pretty much all you do click OK and it should say publish to the selected library use click OK and now when you scroll down the preview we should have m10 by 120 there it is click done and then let's test it so we're going to select place from content center now you should see a combined view this is a combined view of all the different libraries if you just want to see your stuff you can go to or actually you need to select your own megaton filter wouldn't you so you'd have to go add and I'm gonna make a TFI filter and then mmm I didn't give it its own standard those so that won't work will it no it won't know home right I probably should I probably should follow this up that's right let's make our own filled it lets me go unfilled oh that looks at just our stuff so we're gonna go back into the contents and editor we're gonna look at the TFI library fasteners bolts socket head cap screw and we need to get rid of the filler that I put on cuz it didn't work right took on that go to family properties and then for the standard we're going to say is is gonna be is it hmm I'm not too sure if this is actually gonna be a good idea but we'll say standard organization is TFI right and then we're gonna go to add edit filters TFI and then whilst this filter is active we're gonna uncheck all of these except TFI dick dick dick dick fly okay right so whilst we've got our merged view active TFI filter is enabled which is on this one here tf5 filter and a old we should now only see bolts or whatever which is which have been assigned in the TFI standard which is what I've just done I should work there you go you can change that over but it I so there you go I so stuff but up at TFI deify stuff a right okay I'm glad that word right back on point will ready place it we're ready to see if our new size works so we're gonna double click this this is our new bolt actually not we're not because we're still in the editor place from the content center there it is on the TFI filter double click him and we're going to go for m10 and there's our new size 120 click that click OK Oh Toto go drop him in and there's our m10 by 120-volt TFI hiya so four seven six two and ten PI one twenty if we go to the properties of this part we should see TFI hexagon head cap screw so notice it took off the hexagon socket because I remove that from the family description and part number is there yeah that's it in it good that's pretty much it that's how you do it that's how you take your own library copy stuff into it and edit it couple of other things you can't do and a couple of other things that you need to be aware of as well if you were to just delete this right delete nut go back to contents in the editor go to your TFI part or the new one you've created which is this one here and change the family properties and then let's put in one two three four five six at the end of the description right so now when I place this bolt it should put one two three four five six in the description whereas before it didn't so let's shut this down let's go to place from the content center let's drop them in let's place em 10 by 120 and let's press ok and let's drop him in okay let's look at the description it doesn't put it in I need to be any tweeting live let it live you what I need to make you aware of this right once you've placed something from the content sender and you physically put it in your assembly inventor has modeled this component already from the first time I placed it when you place it again the same part even if you delete it from your assembly and you place the pot again from the content said that it will reuse the IPT on your hard disk and that's why I made the project file to start with and then separated the contents under files folder here en-us TFI that there TFI I saw those names rooted at the moment over 100 120 that's the bolt that we placed a couple of minutes ago that bolt there didn't have the 1 2 3 4 5 6 description in it ah since added one two three four five six to the description and the content sender placed the bolt again but it's reused the one from the hard drive which didn't have one two three four five six in the description so just FYI that happens and it can be confusing until you realize what it's doing once you realize what it's doing you go to manage and then you know and you save your assembly first we'll just save this click refresh you know go that one there it's out of date click refresh okay close and then when you go to the properties you should now see it's got one two three four five six let me enter the description and then all well if I placed any other size other than m10 by 120 because that because all the other sizes don't exist on the hard drive they would have come down with the new description but just this one part because we'd already placed it without the description I'm banging home this point it reused it from the hard drive so right another thing you can do as well which can be useful as well as omit the material guide is quite useful one you might have you might have a custom content set apart but you might want to use different materials so what you can do is you've got a material guide click Next add materials as new family members and then you can say right well this is gonna be placed it's stainless steel what you think is it uses by default that one there but you might want to just have standard old stainless steel as well as a second option you can click the Add click Next material alias I've typed in SS first just short for stainless steel click Next and then as a differentiator use the alias and there's a suffix and there's a part number click Next and then click start right I'm just banging through these settings because because of time because I probably already gone on for about 15 minutes now I suspect finish and then shut this down right now now when you place from the content center and then you select your part you're gonna have the option of selecting two materials so we can say m10 by a hundred and then we can choose stainless steel instead of 440c then when we take apply it's gonna drop that in and then as a differentiator and get get him and you select him go to the properties we should see that this has been placed with just standard old stainless steel and the differentiator alias SS has been put in the part number ooh where is this one if you go to the properties is the first one we created that's 440c and that one doesn't have SS in the part number so just a slight differentiator there where you can use the material guide to specify different materials right I'm gonna stop there because anything else further than this is just gonna require much more explanations and confusing clicks and confusing expressions and stuff I think it's probably enough should be enough to get you going for editing the con incentive let me know if I lost you during that I don't know because I'm conscious on making these as quick as possible but at the same time I need to cover lots of informations which is just lots of clicks and the we're kind of dabbling in an area here which isn't that user-friendly in trying to make it user friendly is a little bit tricky but I might have done it I don't know I've no idea but let me know let me know in the comments if it was good let me know by clicking like if you liked it if it helped you out press dislike if you thought it was load of bollocks and subscribe if you haven't already when Ellie mm man really mm party 1 mm happens you

Channel: Tech3D

Views: 51,078

Keywords: Autodesk, Inventor, tips, training, guide, 3D, modelling, part, assembly, best practice, Solidworks, AutoCAD, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, Content center, Content centre, desktop content, IDCL, publish, parts

Id: dg61Kw-bskA

Length: 23min 8sec (1388 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2015