how to publish your own frames into Inventor frame generator tutorial

greetings the rambunctious salutations welcome to Tech 3D as we Embark upon another episode oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] mate right look this is one of those videos where you're just you're gonna need patience to follow along I can't just jump straight into it I'm gonna be three or four minutes into this video and I'll have not done anything yet it's one of those right I can't do anything about it I can't make it quicker it is what it is this process is really complicated I'm gonna do it as simple as I can and skip a whole bunch of stuff that you don't really need to do there's nothing simple about creating your own custom frames and putting them in the content and send them which is what we're doing right this journey is Laden with issues as well which are inherent into Autodesk and vending for example I'm not going to show you the alternative you're just gonna have to trust me if you're going to follow along you have to right click on the inventor shortcut and run it as administrator or else you you can't publish into the content Center the reasons that I I don't know what to tell you I've got nothing and also when you run inventor as the administrator it completely ignores your your default template units so I've got mine set to millimeters but if I just start a new part file it'll do it in inches my videos get played in schools I I often not swear but I've almost had a stroke this morning trying to figure all this stuff out it is what it is so don't use your default template uh use the subfolders so if you want to work in inches I mean maybe you are at look I don't I'm just going to use this one because I know that definitely does start in millimeters okay we're going to put a frame into the content Center and use it with inventors frame generator everybody watching this video is going to have a different requirement on what kind of frame they're expecting to do right and I'm not going to do that because I everyone's different so I'm going to keep it as simple as possible and then just use a generic example so we're going to start a new part file and then what we need to do is go back to the home page we're going to go to the settings of the project file which is now under this little three dots button you're going to click this button here which is a configure content Senate libraries and you should see a list of contents and libraries if you don't have those there you're going to have to install them off the inventor medium there's a tiki box for Content libraries you're gonna have to do that scroll down and provided you launched inventor as the administrator you should see read write if you just double click the icon it's probably going to say read only I've confirmed that in two different machines here does the same thing it's invented 2023.2 at the moment that's the current release click create Library I want to tell you in three minutes in I've done now you need patience if you're going to follow along with this may I don't know I tell you right so we're going to call this library t3d library call it what you want to call it it's a library unique to you it's something that you're going to have to reference and remember your company name uh your name something specific but t3d Library make sure it's ticked I'm not going to use just the the my library the one that it gives you out of the box I'm going to untick that one click OK on that and then I'm going to click save and we're just using the default project for this right click done and then jump back over to part one on the bottom tab down here so to create your own profile and put it into the content Center it's a process it's a process right you have to model the profile first and then author it so we're going to do that we're going to create start sketch drop this on the X Y plane and this is the point where everybody's going to go but I don't want to make that for it I can't do it for everybody's requirements so I'm just going to create something simple we're going to do a polygon snap that to the middle but really important this bit if your frame profile is symmetrical make sure you click the dot if you're doing a rectangle the center needs to be the dot so for the polygon we're going to snap to that Green Dot pull out ladies and then we're going to constrain this with a vertical constraint between that dot there and then there just to line it up so it's all nice and tidy and then we need to make some parameters that the frame generator is going to recognize later on so I'm going to select Dimension Dimension between this line here and then this line here pull that away place it and this is going to be the size of the frame which when you use the frame generator is going to be variable so we're going to give this a name so in the dimension dialog box I'm going to type in it doesn't have to be capitals I'm just going to make a capitals because it's just Bolding in your face size equals and as a starting parameter because this is a hexagonal bar let's start at 50 I mean you don't have to put in the units but size equals 50 and then press return and that creates a named parameter if you go to little FX button at the top you've now got a name parameter called size consumed by sketch one which is what we're working in and it's 50 millimeters right then we're going to select our offset and we're going to offset the hexagon and we're going to call this the thickness or thk equals and I'm not going to make this a formula you could do by saying the you know the thickness is the size of the bar divided by 10 right but I'm not I'm going to have this as an explicit value that I can change later on so I can put in my own bar thickness so thickness equals five and then press return in parameters you should now have size thk 50 mil and 5 mil right click done on that we're going to finish that sketch and then we're going to extrude the the actual hexagon profile here and in the distance we're going to type in another name parameter we're going to have length equals you don't have to put in because you're using this with the frame generator later on the length is going to be variable based on what edges and what kind of frame you're going to you're going to make so the the length here is basically a nothing value so we're going to just put in 0.0001 then press return right save this uh I wherever you want to save it I'm just going to drop it on the desktop just so I know where it's where it is and I'm going to call this uh hex frame uh T3 no actually I'm not going to put my name in I'm just going to call this hex frame click save I'm skipping so many steps by the way there is so much you can configure with this and we're authoring this purely to be used with the frame generator you can use frames in two different ways you can use them with the frame generator or in an assembly you can place from the content Center and then place a frame manually when not authoring it for that purpose this is just for the frame generator okay once that's done uh I'm gonna forget a step I have no doubt but we're gonna go to manage on the ribbon bar and then we're going to author as no one we're not this is where I start forget there's so many steps we're going to go to the content Center editor this button here on the right hand side of the ribbon bar select that and you're going to see a merged view of all your content Center libraries t3d Library which is the one I've just made if you click that it's empty there's nothing in there we need to create a category to publish our frame into now you can create one yourself however it's preferable to go to something like the iso Library go to structural shapes right click on that and then copy the category structure to the t3d library that doesn't copy Parts into it it just copies the structure and brings in all of the properties so if you right click on this little category properties you'll see that it's got a whole bunch of parameters that are needed to make frames you don't want to be remaking all of those so you just copy it cancel that go back to your t3d library here and you should see structural shapes with all of these now because we're publishing a hexagonal frame it doesn't really fall under all of or any of these I mean if I suppose it falls on the other so I can just window select those press delete on the keyboard or no that doesn't work well then oh that's delete and then i-beams channels and angles right click delete category yes I do so we've now got one called other you could if you want to just create your own category and call it you know hex frames but then you need to make you don't need to but you know the little picture there with the with the profile you can you can load your own bitmap right but you'd have to then go to photoshop or paint and make it I can't be bothered with that just that's way too much aggro so we're just going to publish it into other Right double click into other you'll see it's empty that's expected okay but we've now got a category that we can publish into click done on the editor and then whilst we're still on the manage ribbon bar you want to go to the author panel and then this drop down here you want to Select Structural shape give that a click this is where the fun begins it's a process it's a process the category we're going to publish into drop that down and you should see other give that a click base Extrusion it automatically picks up and it should be you should see it highlighted in red the default base Point again if you create your first sketch around the origin point you should see a red dot in the middle we don't have to do anything with that Notch profile though if you're going to notch the frames later on in the workflow you're going to want to select optional select well select Notch profile and it's already selected select the hexagon and the inner bit as well and make sure the whole thing is selected and you should see all of this like that parameter mapping okay select this tab here and this is the part that makes the whole thing work the base length you want to select the three little dots you want to expand parameters model and you want to select length click OK on that scroll down for the shape width you want to select the three little dots expand the parameters model and that's just I mean I could have called this width but I called it size but the size is the width of the frame which I called size shape thickness Circle three little dots again expand parameters model and then select dhk there is a whole bunch of other parameters in here like I said you could do a days with a tutorial on this and to be honest I don't even know what half of these are cards on the table I don't need to know those three will work you want to then select publish now you'll get a prompt that says this part has been modified for authoring okay and then this is the bit where you tell it which Library we're going to put it into so we're going to publish this into the t3d library don't know English sure next we're going to publish into the other category next and then this is just a repeat of what we've already done we've done this bit size thickness and length should all be in there select next and then for the key columns okay the key columns this doesn't matter so much for frame generator but again it's when you place this Frame separate by using place from the content Center these are the prompts that you'll get to Define what size and length of frame you want we're not really going to be doing that so either way we'll select shape at the width and we'll select the thickness we'll drop those in and we'll just put width on the top select next this bit is important because this is the subcategory or the family name of the frame that you're going to see a lot later on so the family name is going to be hex frame and the family description I'm going to put hex frame you'll see this as well when you use the frame later on so it does help to make this something unique so hex frame t3d steel actually no don't put the material in because you can modify the material you have different materials so we'll just put hex frame t3d family folder name hex frame standard organization right this is typically ISO din ANSI BSI right because we're making our own does it fall under a specific standard only you'll know that but for the standard organization I'm just going to put t3d manufacturer is going to be t3d and then standard just t3d right just for me next that's going to be the thumbnail you can load your own if you've got that kind of time I wish I did I don't so I'm just going to accept the default pictures generated and then click publish publish has completed successfully Bravo right to confirm that that's look at this for 14 minutes mate well done if you if you're sticking with me well done there is no quicker way to do this to confirm this has worked you want to go to the editor again on the ribbon bar and then in your t3d library under other you should see hex frame right click on that go to Family Properties and you should see all of the information that you published in before we're not done yet which right all right we'll we'll do we'll do the leg work first right at the moment we've only got one option for this Frame which was bar thickness of 50 with a thickness of five you're going to probably want more options than that so what you want to do is right click on the hex frame in the category that's all I'm using structural shapes other hex frame right click on that go to Family Table and this is the set of parameters that Define the the number of and size of profiles you'll be given as options when you use the frame generator file name don't worry about a file name because inventors frame generator has got its own file name generator so we don't need to worry about file name the designation it should be the width Dash the thickness and you'll see that when you use the frame generator the part number though this is another thing that I can't tell you what it's going to be your company might have a unique part number for ordering these frames if you do that if or if you do have that you can right click the part number column header go to column properties and you can you can either type something in manually or you can create an expression like for example if you want the frame thickness and the the bar length to be in the part number you can put that as an expression like for example you can have a part number is going to be hex frame in commas and then and then you can have inverted commas space Dash is a deliminator and then click the three little dots and then you can say right in the part number I want to include the size of the bar and then put millimeters and then you can put and and then space inverted commas space Dash deliminator inverted commas and then the length of the bar so click the three little dots length millimeters when you click OK your part number is going to look something like this hex frame Dash the size of the bar Dash whatever the length ends up being it's up to you you might have your own custom part numbers though right the material so we're going to select the material here we're going to select uh let's just go with stainless steel and then I think that's all we really need at this point to Define that row but we've still only got one option to make more options you need to right click on the row and then select add row go to the shape width don't forget this is the size of the bar we can have now 16 and then for the thickness you can see it's going to be six mil thick just picture that hexagonal profile so the thickness is going to be six so the material again we can select stainless steel and then for the bar length you need to put this in even though it doesn't matter no point no no not one and then the file name designation is going to be 60-6 the designation is really important because you're going to see that in a bit right click again add another row and then we'll have 7e with a thickness of seven length 0.0001 and material will go back again the stainless steel right you can make as many as you want I'm going to stick to three just this view doesn't go on forever click apply and you should see published successfully to the selected Library click ok okay on that and then shut this down we're now ready to actually use the frame a this part here you can close that down we don't need that anymore uh yes make sure you do save it though and now we need to actually place the frames so you can follow me along here this is my typical test thing that I do when I'm making frames I'll start a new assembly oh my God uh millimeters.iam and then I the way our place frames is I place them on a skeletal model so I'll create a new part in place and I'll call this skeletal model I'm just going to drop everything on my desktop with you you'd put this in your network or in your local workspace if you're using Vault I'm just going to drop everything on my desktop what's super important is for the skeleton model you make this a reference part because you don't want your skeletal model to end up in your parts list select OK and then we're just going to click randomly in space start a new sketch on the XY plane and this is just going to be the bounding box for my framework right so I'm going to select rectangle to point Center why is this an inches I don't care I don't get I'm running with it I'm running with it right we're gonna have 100 inches by uh I don't even know what this is I don't my brain doesn't work in inches and then we'll make a sketch like that finish that and extrude up by about so big I was like 50 inches that's me there's 70 inches and then okay on that so that's the skeleton model if you think well how how does this work with frames I'm going to be placing frames on the edges of the skeletal model on each of the corners but because it's a skeletal model I don't really want it to be kind of prominent so what I normally do is I'll go to the texture on the top drop down and I'll select glass or some kind if you go to the or desk appearance Library select clear something is it called the clear white and that just makes it transparent right return to assembly level save and I'm going to call this uh you know top level product or whatever okay on that and we're now ready to use our custom frame select the design tab and then select insert frame it's going to load the content Center stuff and by default it's going to go to the ANSI Library the iso library but we're going to select our custom library with our custom standard so underneath standard remember I made one called t3d so that's going to be listed here and we've only got one thing which is the hexagonal bar family is just the one actually we should really make this a bit bigger so we can see a bit more there we go the size we made three rows in the table so we'll see three options here fifty by Five Sixty by six and seventy by seven so we're going to select Sixty by six material stainless steel as defined before you can override that if you want to but we're going to stick with stainless steel and then when you select the edges there you go you'll see that it's going to put the hexagonal frame your custom profile on those edges we're not going to commit to this yet because there's one other step that we haven't covered yet and that's the actual file names for the bars since inventor 2020 ish way way after my first tutorial that I did on I'm going to redo the frame generator full tutorial because it's old now or ask if we introduced a custom numbering scheme built into inventor for frames so you need to go to tools go to application options go to the file Tab and at the very bottom underneath options you'll see file naming defaults select that and you've got a frame generator tab I think I might have made a video on this a while back in my channel there might be one back in the library but this is where it's gonna select parameters for naming each individual frame and it overrides what's in that table that we had before when we were looking at the frame generator editor or the content Center editor so when I select the edges place the frames invent is going to call each bar each frame standard which is t3d and then it's going to put the stock number in there now I don't have a stock number so I can delete that out each one of my frames is going to be called t3d Dash and then the length if you want to modify each frame you can select this little plus and you'll see a name you'll see a list of parameters that are available like for example part number now our part number was quite extensive when we put that into the content Center editor so we can put in fact I think the standard might even be in the part number so we can just get rid of that Select Plus and then part number in fact I think the part number even has the length in it so I don't need to have that in there either thing that I'll do I think that'll do you get the point you can build up a stacked file name using those parameters there select OK on that and okay on that right let's go back to design select insert frame we'll drop a frame down on each one of the edges you can window select like this like this uh there there and then there 60 by six and you know you've got I'm not going to go through the full tutorial like how to rotate them that's for a dip this is publishing custom frames so we'll leave it at that select okay this one here is the top level container that is going to put or the top level assembly that is going to put all the bars all the frames underneath you can give that your own name but this was defined in that naming defaults area that we've just been in it creates a separate skeletal model separate to this one which has its own name select OK and there's the file names which was the part number we defined in the content Center editor select ok finally there there's your custom frame used placed in our desks frame generator 25 minutes to do that it doesn't take as long once you know the process and you do it I've been talking explaining doesn't normally take 25 minutes but once you're there you can now might uh that should work now because the your custom frames and then Notch right Notch I don't never remember which language order this is not that to that click OK you see it's not that around the hexane and that's how you do it that's how you do it we did that with a hexagon profile but if you wanted to do a custom aluminum profile you just do the sketch name your parameters reference them in the publish area there's so much more there's so much more but that's the basics of it right once you've saved this inventor will automatically quantify each of these reports list as well so if you were to start a new drawing place your frame go to annotate parts list select that view drop your parts list in you'll see it's Quantified all of those hex frames the part number is wrong yeah the partner means to be something different I would I would not suggest you put the length parameter into the part number but you can see it's Quantified them all a bit and they're all the same bar right they're all the same size and thickness so there's only one item but it's Quantified them all up and it says you need 27 514 millimeters worth of that bar in order to construct this product there you go I'm gonna leave it there 25 minutes is enough that's how you publish your frames in the continent Center with my original frame generator tutorial that's about six years old now all the dialog boxes are different so I'm going to redo that stick around that's coming in the future if you want to support videos like me I'm only doing this because I've got channel members that's what's keeping us going if you want to support the channel there's a join button underneath that helps support my work help support make more videos like this please if you're interested if you if you'd like to encourage more videos like this then please do join the channel get subscribed obviously if you're not already and thank you very much for watching and I'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Tech3D

Views: 5,364

Keywords: autodesk, tech3d

Id: pg6Dci9x0jY

Length: 27min 4sec (1624 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 13 2022