Hole Tool and Options - Autodesk Inventor Part Tutorial | Autodesk Inventor 2021 IN DEPTH

[♪ Music Playing ♪] Hey everybody it's Alex from Engineering Applied in this video we're going to be taking a look at the available hole tool found in autodesk inventor and how to use that to further streamline our models and our workflow if you want more easy to understand and practical content made by an experienced engineer like myself make sure you like this video subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications so you don't miss out on any helpful content like this in the future if you're looking for a specific function make sure you check the description for time stamps and if you don't find what you're looking for in this video check out the other videos in my autodesk inventor series playlist because i'm confident you'll find exactly what you're looking for let's get started okay so i am currently in a sample part file and i wanted to briefly talk about why we want to use the hole tool to simplify our design instead of just simply using a sketch and the extrusion command to cut through our 3d geometry so what you see here in front of you is just a sample of different profiles that we can achieve through the hole tool and of course you can achieve a simple through-hole or a blind cut with the extrusion command and then using the cut boolean operation but the whole point of these lessons is to further improve your modeling skills to the point where we're creating the most efficient and streamlined models as possible so if we want to change features we're only changing one instead of going into a sketch and then changing a bunch of different parameters every time you need to make a change in your model so also the hole command allows us to achieve some more complex geometry and some standardized cuts based on some standard hardware sizes you might be using in your design so we can achieve a counterbore for example with the hole tool so we can specify the depth of the step here um the size of the clearance for both the head of your fastener and the clearance area for the threaded portion of the fastener itself we can also achieve a countersunk profile at the top so maybe you need the head of your screw to rest flush or below the surface of your part whatever that might be you can certainly do that with the hole tool and then finally we can add threads to our holes um whether it's just a simple hole here or um i have also have threads in this countersunk example as well so i just wanted to show you this little sample placard first because i wanted to make a point and drive home the reason why we want to use the hole tool whenever possible if it is necessary in our design so i'm going to go ahead and just model up a blank placard like this and we're going to go over how we can use the hole tool in various ways so that we can achieve the most efficient design possible for you okay so we have our blank drawn up here and so i just extruded a square profile and we're going to create various hole features using this solid body but there's one thing that i want to bring up prior to opening the hole command and that is we have a couple of ways to place holes on a part we can either create a 2d sketch with some center points and then use those center points to reference the holes onto the part or we could just click onto the surface of the part and drop holes directly via the hole command itself so what we're going to do first is we're gonna jump into the hole command up here in the modify section and i'll just give a brief description uh moving from the top left over to the right and then down of the various parameters and then i'll show you a little sample of uh each of these that apply so up here on the top left we have our properties tab you'll notice there's a little x here if we click that x it closes the command we'll go back into the hole tool the next little thing we have here is the show tabs button it's a little plus sign if you click that we can open uh various additional menus here we have our advanced settings menu here these three little lines and um we have some options in this menu that allow us to control how this tool behaves so the first option is pre-select sketch center points so what this does is when you have center points drawn in a 2d sketch so let's say for example we have some center points dropped on the surface what will happen is when we start the hole command it will snap holes automatically to that so let me show you that real quick so we go to new sketch and i'm just going to drop some points here it doesn't matter where they are click ok finish sketch go back to hole and you'll notice because this is not pre-selected it's not snapping any holes to anything here but let's go ahead and select this we'll cancel that and then go back in now you'll notice it auto populates all of these holes in one place now um if you know for a fact that most of your hole patterns or your hole features are going to be the same this is a great way to do it um if there's let's say for example we don't want these two over here on the right what you can do is you don't have to disable that every time you can just click this little x here and then you can just click and drag over the ones you do want and then it'll leave those alone and then you can also individually select center points as well if you choose to do that the next option is keep sketch visible on so what this does is when we hit this little plus sign it'll apply uh the hole settings that we have currently but keep the window open and then the sketch visible so let me show you that here so i'm just going to cancel this and uh let's say we only want these top two on the left as a 3/8 by 16 feature here so we'll just leave it there so it's going to thread this and a 3/8 by 16ths by 16 rather so we'll hit plus okay so it performs that and then it moves over to the next holes because i remember i have this pre-select option enabled now we can pick a different feature without losing this sketch and having to go back and toggle the visibility settings in the model browser so just remember that as you work through so you know we could change this to whatever else it really doesn't matter um so you know we could change those hole features and then do that again and it'll keep it open and then keep that sketch visible but let's back up a couple steps here so we're just going to cancel undo that a couple times we'll go back into the hole function and let's go ahead and cancel that all right so the next option is window select center points only so let's say for example in your sketch some of these so let's add some reference points so these are center points okay we can toggle this option here off of the center point we could go to point and then drop some other items here and typically you would use these basically as construction geometry or something similar to that in a way and so we'll hit okay finish 2d sketch okay so we'll go back into our hole tool and we want to make sure this window select center points only is enabled and so since we have a mixture of center points and non-center points in our 2d sketch what will happen is when i click and drag over these it's only going to pick up the center point so this is a nice way to utilize both center points and then some reference points in your sketch if you need that and only select a certain type of point geometry that is in your sketch okay so that's what that option does further down we have hide presets so if i hide click this it'll hide our presets menu so you saw that little menu disappear and our presets essentially just allows us to save a hole profile or design profile we can rename it to a custom name so maybe i'm uh so i want to do a simple hole that is .250 uh inches in diameter and i commonly use this i can actually create a new preset so i'll just click this little plus sign here and i'll just call it 0.250 through because i always want it to be a through hole and i'll make sure i have my through all option checked and so this is a great way to save a custom profile now if you go to this preset settings button here we can save the current preset rename it delete it change our sort order in our menu and so on and so forth so we can actually delete this you just want to make sure whatever it is you're deleting is already pre-selected and then you just uh click delete current and it goes away so we'll pull this drop down we no longer have that preset so um that was the hide presets menu button here and uh our final option is single enter to finish command it's simply put we just hit the enter key once and it finishes the command if we uncheck that then we would hit the enter key so let's say we're changing a parameter so let's say we change this to 0.200 i hit enter once it enters that parameter and then i hit enter again and then it finishes the command i just like to leave it on single enter it just helps speed up my workflow a little bit but you know this is based on your personal preference and then of course we have our help menu here it takes you to the autodesk inventor help page on the internet if you need any guidance there okay so uh moving down here we covered presets okay so you'll notice we didn't cover this up here so this is the actual hole feature we're creating we can actually edit the name on the fly or we can click on the sketch and it'll take us to the sketch of interest that we're using to create the hole feature so if we click that we can actually modify the sketch from this window and then when we're done so let's say for example we wanted to move a hole around we could certainly do that and then we can go back to our hole feature and it does it all in one place so we don't have to exit out of the command double click on the sketch no that's not necessary you could do it all in one place okay so moving down here now we're getting into the meat of the hole types so let's go ahead and delete this sketch because i want to show you that you can actually create a hole without a sketch so we'll just hit cancel and i'm actually just going to delete this all together okay we'll go to hole all right so there's a little button here and you'll notice in our input geometry section we have a positions box so when this is active you'll notice a little blue line here you want to make sure this is enabled uh by seeing this little blue line and then we can pick up some spots on the surface so uh this little button here allows center point creation on so it basically creates a center point wherever you click within the command rather than going into a sketch and doing it there so if you have that toggled we can just click on the surface and we can drop center points as we need there it can even reference um a center point in the in this case it's the origin so you can use things like that um now if you uncheck that it's not going to allow you to create center points so if you want to use this tool and you have a habit of accidentally dropping an extra hole where you don't want it you'll probably want to uncheck that so again that's personal preference we'll just re-enable that so again you can create points on the fly or you can use a sketch i personally prefer to use a sketch because that flows with my workflow a little bit nicer i like to position everything prior to making the hole that way when i change the position the hole auto updates but again it's your preference okay so let's talk about our various hole types so what i'm going to do is on each individual hole type i'm going to cover the various behavior options that we have for those since those typically change based on your options so first we'll start out with the simple hole it's as well simple as it says it basically is a drilled hole through your part there's no threads uh nothing special like a seat or a um a step as if it was counter-bored nothing like that just a simple hole okay and under our behavior section we get a few different options for how this is terminated so the first option is the distance so maybe you want to do a blind distance down to a certain depth you could specify the depth the hole goes down to now you'll notice down here we can choose the direction so it's going to default um to being cut into the part but maybe you have a mid plane that you're putting the hole feature on so if we had a plane positioned right in the middle of this if you can imagine it sandwiched right in the middle of this part and we're putting a hole on that plane we could actually do a cut hole halfway through the part and down to a certain point and we can flip the direction so we could either cut to this side or the other side um generally you wouldn't want to do that unless a midplane is significant to the flow of your design maybe you're picking up the midpoint several times in your design and you like to use that as a point of reference you could certainly do that and we also have the drill point option so we can either add the drill point in here or we can leave it as a flat hole so just depending on your preference and how you want to show it in your model you can do that there now if you're doing a blind hole that is being drilled with let's say a 118 degree pointed drill bit it's a good idea to leave that because it gives you a good visualization of what material is actually left in that space because if you're drilling into a thin part you need to know how much material is between the tip of that cut and the other side of your part so that's just my opinion on the matter again it really doesn't matter just as long as you're always accounting for those things at you know towards the end product so that's that option as well now you'll notice there's these little arrows next to each option if you click this it'll just change the selector style for this so currently it's set to icons i prefer drop down or icons personally but you can select drop down if you want it just gives you a little drop down menu we'll go back to icons now let's go back up to the termination options for this because we can also select through all so if you know no matter what this part's going to look like you're always going to drill holes all the way through it this is a good option so regardless of the thickness changes that you do to the part whatever you do it's always going to drill these hole features all the way through so if you know that's going to be the case use the through all option and then of course the next option is to so if you use this you can select a face to drill to now let's say for example i wanted to use a reference plane what i could do is i could do an offset and i'll just drag it you know to some arbitrary distance and then what i can do is i can drop a hole here select the to option and then select this plane and it'll cut down to that plane so you know if you're using reference planes for whatever reason and you want to pick up that reference plane as your distance to drill down to you can always do that as well so we're going to go ahead and delete that real quick go back into the hole command okay so it looks like we've covered everything in the simple hole now i want to move down here and i want to talk about the advanced properties so if we check the imate so let's drop a hole here if we check this imate option it'll automatically assign an imate property to the hole for use in your assemblies also we have the extend start so let's actually drop a plane back down again because i want to show you what this does for us so if we just drop that plane there and let's do a hole feature on this plane for example i don't know why you would typically do this again it just really depends on the specifics of your design but this is certainly there for that so if i uncheck that it's going to start the hole from that mid plane and it's going to go down through one side you know like i said earlier we can flip the direction or we could do a symmetric option here but if we check this it's going to extend that hole all the way up to the other face on the other side so again depending on your design intent that's available to you as well now let's move back up to the top here and we're going to move over to the clearance hole option so um if we go to clearance hole essentially what this does is it automates the clearance hole design process for us so let's say for example we wanted to put a number 10 fastener here you know we needed a clearance hole for a number 10 fastener and uh let's say that we wanted a normal fit so what this does for us is it allows us to pick our standard of fasteners so you have a bunch of different standards in here um it allows us to pick the type of fastener so in this case it's just treating as a flathead machine screw or we could pick a hex head bolt just depends on your design okay your size and then again your fit so if we need a little bit less clearance around the fastener so say we need a really high precision hole cut so maybe for example you're creating some sort of uh go no go gauge or some sort of test fixture that has to hold a tight tolerance around those hole features because that's what's actually checking your part maybe you'd want a close fit but maybe it doesn't need to be super tight tolerance you just need it to work over a longer distance well then you'd want a looser fit around that hole so again this just helps you automate your process for your clearance fits now me personally i like to uh design my clearance holes specifically tailored to what machine shop specifications are available for that particular machine shop i'm using because i always want to make sure my designs that i have full control over the tolerance that's assigned to the design and how that's actually going to work once the finished product is created um so just a little food for thought there um let's move down here we have the same options for your termination and your direction and then you know of course we can create a custom clearance value if you want to do that so we could just you know let's say we wanted 0.250 for whatever reason you could certainly do that all right so let's go back drop a hole there okay the next option is a tapped hole so it's basically a simple hole but it shows the threads for your fastener so let's say i want a quarter inch by 20 fastener we can change the thread direction with this left hand right hand option we can specify whether it's a full depth or a blind depth so if we uncheck that we could specify our depth for the tapped uh for the threads so um let's recheck that we have our same termination options that we've seen before direction okay and then we also have our imate and extend start options as well moving over we have our taper tapped hole which basically creates a tapered hole that is also tapped so if you needed one of these in your design that's certainly there for you as well now let's go back to a simple hole design but let's talk about the different seat options so when you have no seat selected it's just going to be a standard hole but we can also create a counterbored feature or a countersunk feature now a counterbored feature has a flat step and um you would typically use this if you want to seat a cap head screw or fastener below the surface of a part so let's say i selected some fastener from a vendor that i want to use and i need the top of the screw to sit below the surface so that it doesn't interfere with something else being stacked on top of it or whatever else we want to do there so you know that's certainly an option we can do a spot face which basically allows us to specify the depth of the uh of the step here or you know the clearance for the top part here we can specify the opening as well at the bottom and then we also have the countersink option which just allows us to create a countersink for our fastener and so this is for a flathead fastener that is at an angle so it's really common at least for the smaller fasteners to be at an 82 degree angle sometimes there's larger angles as well depending on your loading uh conditions and and your loading properties of your system so again you can specify your angle based on your fastener type you can specify the opening size and this is just a really great way to automate this process and get the cleanest and quickest design flow as possible for you one final point i wanted to talk about is that we can also mix and match the seats with various hole types so let's say we want instead of a simple hole we wanted a clearance hole but counterbored we can always do that so you know we can size that however we need and combine this with a clearance hole type or we can switch it to a tapped hole and let's say a countersunk opening as well so again you can mix and match things depending on your design needs and that just about sums up all of the hole functions and how you would use this appropriately in your designs that wraps up this segment of the autodesk inventor part modification module where we took a look at the available hole tool don't forget to like this video subscribe to my channel and turn on notifications to stay up to date on future content that will help you reach your goals along your journey and of course don't hesitate to leave a comment or reach out via my website contact page and let me know if there's anything else you'd like to learn about or see on this channel as always i love sharing my knowledge and experience with the community and i'll see you again soon [♪ Music Playing ♪]

Channel: Engineering Applied

Views: 3,295

Keywords: autodesk inventor tutorial, autodesk inventor tutorial for beginners, autodesk inventor 2021 tutorial, how to use autodesk inventor 2021, inventor tutorial 2021, autodesk inventor professional 2021 tutorial, hole tool in inventor, hole command in inventor, hole tool in autodesk inventor

Id: cBbrNA88VrM

Length: 21min 52sec (1312 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020