How To Bolted Connections, Full (Almost!) Training | Autodesk Inventor

hello and welcome to the next video of my invented tips and tricks series this one might be a little bit long and I make no apologies because it's a bit of a tricky subject there's a lot to cover I don't want to go bit harder or little half harder on this one because it this can help a lot of people and I want to cover as much of it as I can it's all about bold connections both the connection is inventors one of inventors design accelerators you'll find it when you've got inventor open and in assembly open if you click your design tab at the top you've got bolder connection here bulk connection designs and calculate spree turns builder connections and performs a strength check what the hell does that mean right what it does bolla connection creates a collection of components so you get an assembly from Buller connection that assembly will contain a bolt and if you want a washer and not a wingnut a split pin or just just a bolt in the washer if you want but it creates them in one operation if you wanted to if you were stuck way inclined you could manually one by one place into your assembly a bolt then a washer then constrain them up but the polar connection will do it for you in one operation before we get started there is one major thing you need to make sure before you do start the board connection and that is you need to make sure you have the content Center working now just as a very quick sanity check to make sure you do or you don't click the assemble tab at the top click this little drop down here and then select place on the content center now you should be presented with a huge library of nuts bolts washers pins shaft parts and sheet metal bits and bobs to apply etc etc if you see nothing in here then you don't have the content Center setup a good another way to check whether you do or you don't is to click the I menu the top left of in vendor go to the options button click the contents on the tab and then check your access options here if you're using an Autodesk vault server then you're probably in for a bad time because the vault server requires a lot of setting up to get the contents and a libraries to work I suggest you go and ask your local or desk reseller for a bit of help there it's not something I can cover in this video if you're using invented desktop content you should be given a path here ctrl C copy that to the clipboard open up Windows Explorer paste that in here and then you should see hopefully a bunch of ID CL files in vendor ANSI and then I so these are all the libraries that contain the information you need to create the nuts bolts and washers etc if you don't have these here you can install them off the inventor DVD or USB stick that you were given when you bought in vendor whether you got it with product design suite it should be an option in the Installer to install the contents and the libraries have it dig around see if you can get that installed if you do have it installed and everything's good to go let's get cracking Reeth alright so right I have trying to think about where to start here so I think what we'll cover first are the different ways you can place a boulder connection because I guess that's that's most of the bow understanding how to actually get started with it so this example that I've got here right this is a typical use for a boulder connection I've got a bracket here which is kind of hovering above this little yellow component here and I need this to be bolted to this little yellow body beige colored body thing here so what I need is a bolt that goes maybe starts around here it's going to be drilled through the bracket through the beige body and then it's going to be tightened with a nut on the opposite side of the bracket here that's going to be my bullet connection and as you can see I don't have a hole already existing for the bolt to go through because the boulder connection tool can create that hole for me however alternatively I do have an existing set up with holes already in there because I'm going to show you also how to create builder connection when you do have a hole as well as not having a hole so we're going to look at and explore the different options that we've got starting with no holes so I'm going to jump into the bolt connection generator so in the assembly environment click the design then click below connection right the the dialog box when you first open it up does look a little bit scary it is a little bit ah a bit professional we're saying it's not very user friendly but it's a wizard it's a wizard that helps us create the geometry that we need but it needs some inputs from you you it needs it to tell it needs it for you to tell it where you want things to go so the different placements that we have we've got four different types we've got a linear bowler connection we've got a concentric bowler connection on point and by hole this is it gets to the same end result doesn't matter which one you pick you're going to end up with the same thing you're going to end up with an assembly containing a bolt a washer and a nut the placements is just well what do you have well at the moment I have nothing I don't have a hole so I can't use by hole I don't have a point either so I can't select on point so I can select either linear or concentric now starting with linear the linear placement is asking you to pick a start plane the start plane is the face on the 3d model that the bolt is going to be tightened up against so if you think about a bolt if you think about the head of a bolt it has a flat face that flat face is going to touch a surface when it's put into the hole and tightened that is your start plane and that is going to be this face in my example secondly it's asking us for two linear edges the linear edges is you picking two straight edges to tell an vendor how far away from those edges the center of the hole will be drilled so for example in this face in this example here I need to pick two straight edges so I'm going to pick this one here and this one here starting with this one so when I pick that edge it's saying how far away from that edge do you want the center of the hole to be and obviously this little green arrow here is the center of the hole so I'm going to say ten millimeters and then press Enter the second linear edge is how far away from this edge I want the holder be so I want to pick it here and then I'm going to say 22 millimeters and that confirms the center of the hole and we can then crack on with the final option which is the termination and that's the exit hole what is the last face that this bullet connection is going to exit from and that in my case will be this face here once it's done that it gives you a preview of the the hole itself because we didn't have a hole already in the 3d model it's going to create that hole for us and that is shown by the red preview however I'm not going to continue yet I'm going to show you the other placements which is concentric on point and by hole so I'm going to cancel out of this I'm going to go back into the bolt connection and I'm going to pick the next one which is concentric so concentric requires similar inputs it still needs a start plane which is going to be this face here however instead of picking two edges to place the hole it's giving us the option of picking a circular edge an arc edge and it will create the center of the hole concentric to that circular edge so if you think of this arc here being part of a circle think of where the center point of that circle would be that's where it's going to place the center of our hole and then finally it needs a termination point which is going to be the same as the linear placement and it's that there so as you can see it's going to give us the same hole but we've just placed it in a different way the third placement type is on point now on point is expecting from you some pre-created sketch points or work points so what we can do is edit this bracket create a sketch on this face and I can pre create the points that I would have otherwise manually created using linear in concentric so we've created a sketch on the face of this bracket and then what I can do is create a point here on that face and then i can use constraints if i wanted to so let's just say project that better geometry here and then using the concentric constraint I can make this sketch point concentric add to the okay maybe economy was dragging about pulling that battle team so essentially that is now that sketch point is now concentric to the projected jewelry which was pretty much the same as what we would have got with the concentric placement so when we finish the sketch I'm gonna return bucket li assembly start at bolt connection generator select the on point placement it requires a start plate which is again going to be this face and now it's asking for a point and then I can select my sketch point and it will place the hole on that sketch point the final phase is going to be again this face here again we get the red preview exactly the same as the other placement methods we've just got they're using a different technique the final type is by hole and this is when you already have a hole in existence so what I'm going to do is I'm going to switch over to my model that has holes on it and start the bowler connection generator select by hole again it asks you for a start plane but this time it's asking for an existing hole so we're going to pick this here and then it just lines the bowler connection center line to the existing 3d hole and then the final face again same as the other methods the termination plane easy it's dead easy okay cancel that out and what I'm going to do is go back to the no holes method I'm not going to use on point so I'm going to delete the sketch that I've created just so it's not cluttering with you and go back into the bullet connection generator and we're going to roll with a concentric placement which requires the start face the concentric edge and the final termination plane right hopefully you followed that got into a bit of or pilot mode that but we're ready to go to the next step so just to analyze what we've got here in vendor has given us three holes in the bolt connection generator why well it needs to drill three holes why well because it's got to go through three solids if you think about this model we've got one leg here right that's one section of solid it needs to drill through that there that's one part in its own it then needs to create a second hole on a second component which is this yellow body here and then it needs to create a third hole through the second leg on the bracket so we've got three drilled holes they are represented by this hole this hole and this hole here in terms of their order because this is the start plane here this segment here is the top hole the second hole is this one here going through the yellow body the third hole is this one here on the termination plane right the sizes of the hole are determined by this section here which is the thread of the bolt so this is going to be the size the diameter of the bolt that we're going to get this option here is automatically determined for us based on the thread of the hole now if you think about an 8 mil diameter hole srn 8 mil diameter bolt it's not going to give us an exact 8 mil diameter hole because that fit is just going to be too tight you can't put an 8 mil bolt through an exact 8 mil hole it's like I said it's gonna be too tight so what it because what it does is it gives us a slightly larger clearance on the hole based on the boat diameter through thread diameter that you pick here so for example if we go for a 6 mil bolt diameter it then drops the hole size down to 6.6 gives us enough clearance if we pick eight goes up to 9 if it gives us 12 that goes with 13.5 but obviously now the hole preview is showing it's a bit too big thing about the bolt that's going to go through there it's going to be too large so let's drop this down to a mill okay a couple of other options that we can do depending on the geometry and the model that you're working on if you select a first hole for example you can click the three dots and that will allow you to change the hole type so you can say well we want to we want to loose fit and then it'll increase the diameter of the hole itself you'd have to do that on all three of them or you can go for a close fit which is going to be eight point four so that's going to be a real tight fit custom diameter or you can go for a threaded hole and then it'll create the thread for you just a picture and then you can pick the designation in class of the thread that you want to work with but we're going to just stick with normal okay another thing you can do is well on the first hole is you can select this drop-down arrow here and then this is going to give you a list of different hole types that you can use on the first hole so we can pick a standard so let's go for the ISO standard if you're going to be placing a countersunk there screw you can then ask it to create a countersink hole for the first hole it drills in the bold connection so it's going to give you that angled insert into the hole based on again it's based on industry standard bolt & screw types so we can pick like for example socket head cap screw clearly it's too big for the jhumri that were working with but you can see from the preview what it's going to do is going to give us a large socket head cap screw opening in the hole that will allow this socket head cap screw itself to slot into but like I said it's too big for this example so we're going to just drop that back down to an ISO normal drilled hole and that's just going to give us a straight drill through hole through all three solids ah right the next thing we need to do is this is the this is the good stuff this is where it starts to get juicy so we need to start picking the bolts and the nuts and the washers that were going to use in this bowler connection assembly so to do that we need to select click to add a fastener now it's very least they've not done a very good job here of being user-friendly click the add a fastener this is actually a button click this it queries the content center and it looks at the inputs you've given it that the bolt diameter here the hole types and it looks it also it looks at the length that the bolt has to go across the start plane and the termination plane based on the bolt diameter and the length it will then give you a list of bolts that are applicable for this criteria and it obtains those from the content center here they are right we can make this dialog box a little bit bigger if we want to now it's currently listing standards from all the global standards that inventor has in the content center if you're just working with an C or ISO standards you can filter those out and then I'll say right well based on the is standard the length of bolt that you need these are the bolt & screw types that you can work with so I'm going to pick let's pick this one either four one six two that then adds that bolt to the boulder connection set up based on the hole diameter the length between the start of the termination plane it's determined that we need an m8 by 65 length to suit this bolt connection so if we look straight on that green preview that is the bolt that is going to give us and it looks pretty good I'm happy with that that looks pretty nice that looks pretty nice next thing we need to do is select click the add a fastener again obviously you can't put a bolt under a bolt that's just not going to work so the next thing it does it queries the content center it looks at the diameter that you're working with and it's going to give you a list of washers so again based on the list of washers the best-lookin pick I don't know it hasn't really done a very good job of fitting that on screen so let's just click again move it a bit to the right so there's the list of washers again I'm not interested in CNS standards and AAS standards I just wanted list ISO standards and then here's a bunch of washers let's pick the first one in the list and if we again look sidon it's added the washer to the preview and what it'll also do if it needs to is it will increase the length of the bolt if the bolt starts to recess inside the hole it will increase the length of the bolt to suit however if you were a control at this little red arrow here if you hold the left mouse button down on the red arrow it will allow you to increase the length of the bolt based on the standard that the bolt is from so we can have an emmy by 70 70 at 80 and that's as far as it goes unless i'm just cock-blocked by the screen nope that's as far as it goes so we'll keep it with the 65 okay if you want to add a second washer so you might want to spring washer underneath here you can select click the add a fastener again because it's above the first hole these components are on this side underneath the final hole you've got another option for click to add a fastener and that will start they're stacking components on the termination plane on this side so select click data fastener it'll against go right well what do you want do you want a washer or do you want a nut so you can pick if you don't need a washer you can just select nuts if you do want a washer you can pick one from the list and it will add it to the preview and it will add it to the Builder connection list down here if you do also need a note as well as a washer which in this case obviously I do what the post is going to fall out we can select click that add a fastener again it will then again query the content sender it looks at what you can have and it will present you with a list of nuts based on the criteria that you've got so we can select again ISO standards and let's have I don't know one of those there we go that looks massive but I don't care as long as it works alright so there's our football the connection done if I'm happy with that I can click OK at this point and it will model the components at the moment these components don't exist they're just all theory so preview click ok and it will go ahead and model them alternatively there's a couple of other options I'm kind of this has gone on for quite some time now so I'm kind of in the realms of a training course yes ok so I'll just carry on and go the full hog if this is going to be a common setup if you're going to be using these components that washer that bolt that nut over and over and over again you can select this option here which is more options and then you can add this collection of components as a template so we can say my bullet connection with a stock I sold four one six two bolt click ok and it will save this setup to a template so the next time you go to a bowl the connection you can pick this template click set and based on the start plane the hole and the termination point it will try to use these components again in the next couple the connection that you do so you don't have to click add a fastener out of fastener etc etc so you know what I mean it it's copying and pasting a previous setup into a new polar connection so that's how you can use a template again and again another thing you can do as well and I'm not going to go to this in tune with too much depth because frankly I'm not a professor and I've got no idea what a list of things I was off that day in university but this is the polar connection strength calculation what you can do in here is you can look at the Balder connection that you've got which is a bit that's not people that connection that you've got but it's sort of a sort of mock-up of it and you can look at the axial forces the tangent forces and then you can say right well based on the based on the design that I'm doing I know there's going to be 1,000 Newton's of axial force which is the F a force up here there's going to be 1,000 Newton's of axial force going through my board connection invent I will look at the bolt the bolt the washer the nuts that you've got in this bowl of connection and based on 1000 Newton's of force you can hit calculate and it will tell you whether or not that the bolt will fail and you can configure a required safety factor so you can say well actually I'm working on a safety factor of 1.5 hit calculate will 1,000 Newton's of force still be okay yes it will the safety factor is currently 5.8 now if you just crank that up to 10,000 Newton's and hit calculate the safety factor is going to go down to 0.58 my bullet can actually will fail with 10,000 Newton's of force you can also override the plate material the bolt material currently is looked at the model and it's just looking at whatever material you've used in the actual model itself but you can override that and use some proper materials which are actually different from the materials that you use to seen we've got a lot more to choose from here all right such the calculation we've also got a full diameter design we've got a number of different strength calculations to work with we can also do fatigue calculation to enable fatigue calculation you've got it for some reason have no idea why you're going to enable it by clicking that button there and then you can start mess this is way beyond my understanding I've got no idea but if you do understand who the kegui your glue Chester and doggy huh and buggy key guys who have probably far more intelligent and I am a few understand their methods then crack on and then you could do a youtube video yourself explaining what it all means right so we've got a few calculation report results here saying that by the way if you do go ahead with this I understand that you were going to apply a ten thousand user force did you know that this isn't going to work it's going to just list that down here this is just for your information but you know if you don't like seeing red pen hick put that back to a thousand unions and it says away everything's fine everything's going to work right we're ready to go we're ready to commit to the Builder connection so what were then going to do now is click okay and invent it's going to start saying you're right well we're going to I'm going to give you a bullet connection that Boulder connection is going to be an assembly the assembly is going to be called builder connection one and it's going to save that build a connection assembly into a subfolder underneath the folder where your assembly is saved either on your server or in your local workspace on your computer I cannot stress enough if you're using volt do not accept the default file name that it gives you because you the guy sitting next to you the guy across the office everyone in his dog will be creating assemblies called Boulder connection one you don't want 100 assemblies in your vault called builded connection one trust me you don't want to be in that position so what I highly recommend that you do is select this cell click the three dots and then give it a unique name what I recommend that you do is give it so say for example my current assembly is called AG six one six five call this boulder connection assembly a g6 165 - pull the connection - zero zero one something like that give it a unique name and save that if you do another bullet connection you can call that one six one six five - BC - 0 0 - 0 0 3 etc that makes sure the Assemblies that you create and via the bullet connection have unique names I honestly cannot stress the importance enough of that click OK it'll then go away it'll pull the bolts the washers and the nuts out with is done it already before I even finish explain what it's done and there we are so there's the bolt that I've asked it to create there's the first washer come over to this side there's the second washer there and there's the nut now if you look at the border connection it hasn't actually extended the bolt outside of the nut now it's it would have done that however I'm manually intervened by grabbing the red arrow and pulling the the length of the bolt inventor's assume that I knew what I was doing and it's left the length of the bolt at 65 I'm not happy with that it's not good enough then not well I'm chances are the nut isn't even going to grip onto the thread of the bolt so what we need to do is make a quick edit to the bullet connection now because we've done this using the Builder connection generator in your inventor browser you can see here we've got a bolted connection node with a little glyph on it and that lets you know that this assembly was created using a design accelerated and if you right click on it you can then edit that assembly using the design accelerator and that's going to pull us back into the bolt connection tool and we can then grab the arrow and then we can move the bolt outside we can just increase its length slightly and then click OK there we go look at that looking absolutely PG right that's it that's how you do a bowler connection it's as easy as that it's taken me a long time I have no idea how long this video is but it's taken me a long time if I wasn't talking and explaining it you could have done that in less than 30 seconds it's that quick if you would do this manually it would have taken you uh I don't know a lot longer but that's what the port connection does right a couple of final points on the bullet connection things that you don't need to understand but hey I've got this far I might as well cover them the bolt connection itself like I've said a few times already is an assembly what do you get with an assembly this is an assembly in an assembly so that's actually a sub assembly but what does every assembly have and need it needs a parts list so if I call it the Bill of Materials along its same at first actually let's just make sure everything's saved the call it the Bill of Materials there's my bolt connection now if that was a part list if you were handing this parts list over to your purchasing team to say I need this I need to buy this if you were to say buy this bolted connection they're going to turn around here with a blank look on the face and say okay what how are you how can I buy a bolded connection what is a builder connection I need to know what bold you've got what not you've got what washer you've got but the connection means nothing to me so the port of connection does it knows this so it makes and it does this automatically it makes your bolted connections sub assembly a phantom so when it does come to the structure it rolls up then not the washer and the we've got a washer and minus 4 here or we got let's expand this out I've picked two different washers so it's after publishing it and that probably should have pick the same one but we've got two different washers here we've got the hexagon nut and then we've got the flange bolt here the X the hex flange bolt it rolls those up because they're phantoms and it places them into the parts list now clearly I've played around with this so they're all itemized wrongly so I can just renumber those starting one and there's our part list that's a full comprehensive list of parts that you need to give your purchasing team to buy this assembly oh right I think that's it I think that's enough for baller connection don't think there's anything else I need a cover on it it should be enough to get youse going with it apologies for a bit this long if you've managed to stick it out at the end congratulations because I'm actually bored of talk border my own voice I didn't expect the corn for this long but anyway hopefully you found that useful that's the bullet connection generator all the different ways you can place it and the different options that you've got for selecting bolts components and the hole types that you need hopefully found that useful if you did please press like on the video put a comment down below subscribe the channel if you want to see more tutorials just like this I'm starting to now dive off into the different more specialized areas rather than just tips and tricks so if you've got any comments if you've got any things that you want to see any suggestions please put them in the comments in the video below and yeah don't forget to subscribe the channel if you want already if you have thank you very much and see ya

Channel: Tech3D

Views: 124,229

Keywords: Autodesk, Inventor, tips, training, guide, 3D, modelling, part, assembly, best practice, Solidworks, AutoCAD, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, Bolted Connection, Generator, Design Accelerator, Bolt, Screw, Washer, Nut, Pin, Phantom, BOM

Id: LBKu0HF-hOM

Length: 28min 46sec (1726 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2015