Inventor 2017 Tips & Tricks: Skeletal vs Table Driven Modeling

hello everyone and welcome to our series of webinars featuring Tips & Tricks for Autodesk Inventor my name is Dan Williams and I'm a manufacturing applications engineer for reaper products incorporated today we're going to be talking about some topics that I found particularly useful but rarely get addressed at training first we'll we'll consider skeletal versus table driven modeling both are techniques which allow the designer to share parameters across multiple parts and assemblies that way if a design or project by parameter changes all of the dependent parts and assemblies update when paired with Autodesk false coffee design both techniques provide a powerful basis for configuration management or for what many refer to is engineered to order the two distinct modeling techniques often described as skeletal or table driven have as their basis the sharing of common parameters between multiple parts were assemblies that way if certain of these shared parameters change all of the dependent parts and assemblies update to reflect those changes let's take a look at the parameters of this clevis part here we have demonstrated three different types of parameters the parameters you see here are probably among those you're already familiar with model parameters of course being those that are the result of just simply placing parametric dimensions in there in your model and then user-defined parameters I wanted to point out reference parameters because these will be featured in the future tips and tricks video however all these parameters have something in common in that they're only available to the current part but we really want to focus on all the parameters associated with this link button down here what this link button allows us to do is to link to an external resource or definition of parameters we cannot link to either an Excel spreadsheet or another part or assembly well obviously if we're linking to an external spreadsheet that's probably gonna be the basis of table driven design if we're linking to an external part or assembly button that's the basis of what we call skeletal modeling or a single part or assembly controls all the other parts in the assembly let's take a closer look at the Excel spreadsheet that we're going to attach to this drawing it's a fairly simple format and the first column will have a list of parameter names the next column will be a list of values third column will be units and then the fourth column is reserved for some sort of a description of the parameter now we want to point out that the first parameter name is located at cell d8 this is gonna be our start cell for when we linked the Excel spreadsheet to our part the reason that significant is because inventor ignores anything above and to the left of that start so what that means is that we can use it for things like column headers but we can also use diagrams exotic math pretty much anything that we can insert into a Excel spreadsheet we can position above and to the left of that store cell also if we skip a row and better we'll ignore anything below that blank rows again we can use the space beneath that blank row to perform exotic excel functions and that sort of thing in order to sort of design intent into our model so now that we've got an Excel spreadsheet what we want to do is we want to link it again d8 is our is our start cell once it's linked you can see that we have a number of additional parameters here and what's left is first just to use them so let's do that I'll go ahead and edit the sketch of our extrusion make this parameter equal to a parameter called clevis gap will make this parameter right here equal to a parameter called clevis thickness the whole diameter will actually set equal to another parameter call hole diameter now that this part is tied to the Excel spreadsheet if we modify that Excel spreadsheet say change the clevis thickness to a value of something like one and the clevis gap to something like six save the Excel spreadsheet back in the inventor file we can see that there is a pending update if we execute that update we can see that the model updates so now what we need to do is we need to reference this part into a larger assembly and then link more parts that Excel spreadsheet so what I'll do is I'll go ahead and start a new assembly and in all reference my club is part into it grounding it the origin and then within this assembly will create another component will call this shaft and it of course will be a standard English inch part it'll begin with a just a super cross-section now here's what we want to begin to build some dependency between the two parts at this point this new part doesn't have any of those common parameters because we've yet to link it to that Excel spreadsheet so I'll do that now the beginning cell was da now that we have our common parameters now we can place a dimension instead of equal to one of our shared parameters now let's tutored about a midplane again a distance dependent on one of the shared parameters and then create some interface geometry let's make this equal to the whole diameter an extruder at a distance equal to clever thickness and then we'll simply mirror that to the other side now we can constrain it to the other part and I want to use my alt drag method to quickly apply it in certain string so that now both of these parts are dependent on the same table if I were to modify the table say make this equal to or five and make the clevis cap equal to eight I'll save the Excel spreadsheet there's a pending update and of course both parts update because they are in fact both dependent on the same shared parameters now let's take a look at an example of skeletal marlott remember the difference between table driven design and skeletal modeling is basically where the external parameters are stored obviously in a table driven design as an Excel spreadsheet in our example of skeletal modeling that's gonna be this part right here in fact sometimes we refer to this is the skeletal model if I take a look at some of the parameters I'm free to find in this part you can see I've defined some overall parameters like width and depth and then I've also defined this thickness right here that's important because I eventually intend to create some sheet metal parts for this assembly and thickness is a parameter that's always utilized by sheet networks so this thickness will eventually end up being the thickness of my sheet metal parts also notice that over here I've exported some of these parameters now the result of exporting these parameters is really twofold one is that it becomes metadata associated with this part file but it also makes it available so that it can be browsed by and referenced within other parts I'll go ahead and say done here and then I'll begin creating some new parts that I will make dependent on this all right here I'll go ahead and create a new part and this is of course gonna be a sheet metal heart I don't need to sketch so I'll go ahead and exit the sketch and delete it and one of the ways that I can reference the parameters of another part into my part is by by deriving a new part based on my skeletal model so I'll go ahead and derive a new part and I will select my skull to model and what I'll do here is I'll go ahead and create something called a work surface now our work surface is particularly useful for creating assemblies that are made up of sheet metal parts and/or plate and you'll see why shortly notice that I can also import a number of other aspects of that skeletal model obviously one is the solid body itself but I can also import some of the parameters and remember some of these parameters I exported so they're already available and browsable here's the user parameter for thickness that I'll eventually use to create my achievement awards I'm pretty happy with this so I'll go ahead and say okay I'm gonna go ahead and select what I think will be a good view and then I'll use a special technique for creating parts I'm gonna actually thicken one of these work body phases so I'll go to my 3d modeling task and then i'll thicken this particular face let me try thicken it to the outside that's good and I'll go ahead and make that a distance of thickness that's the shared parameter that was pretty defined in the skeletal model so I'll go and say okay here I'm pretty happy with this part eventually I won't need this solid body of work body to be visible so I'll go ahead and turn off his visibility I'm gonna save this file as we'll call it right panel and then as a shortcut since the same process is going to be utilized to create the rest of the parts in this assembly I want to go ahead and save this file as left panel and I simply need to delete this thick in the feature aisle temporarily turn back on the visibility of my work body thick in the opposite face again a distance of thickness my final part I will need to be able to see that work body so I'll turn off this visibility save the file and save it as a third part this one's going to be called top panel for my top panel I don't really need to see this thickened face I will need to temporarily be able to see the work body though this time I'll thicken these three phases here in thickening all to the outside a distance of thickness in the final part of course I don't want to be able to see this work body so I'll turn on this visibility I am pretty happy with all that so I'll go ahead and save this file now what I can do is I can start a new assembly you standard inch part the first part I'll place will be that top panel and I'll one of the advantages of creating parts in this fashion is that they all share a common origin so as that as I place them I don't need to be bothered with actually using any assembly constraints I can just ground them all at the origin because they all have the same origin they'll all be inserted in the correct location let's do the right panel now again grounded at the origin repeat the process for the left panel granted the origin and I have a nearly complete assembly now this was a slightly more complicated example of creating parts within a skeletal model because it used that derived part functionality you can actually utilize it much more simple fashion by placing any component and then just linking it to the to the part in a fashion similar to the way that we linked parts to the Excel spreadsheet in the table-driven example so now if I for instance place a component from content Center let's just go ahead and place a ANSI equal angles piece of angle and we'll make it two by two by 3/16 and we'll just give it some standard length for the time being a little call twelve inches obviously won't want it to be a custom part in this case we'll call it grace front so as I place this part it just has a has a unit length for instance what I want to do is to make sure that it's always the same length as one of these sides of the part so what I can do is I can determine what was it what was the parameter that controlled that length if I go back to my extrusion and edit its sketch I can see that that's actually width so back in my assembly I'll edit this part and as you know structural steel shapes from Content Center have a parameter called based length so this base length is what I want to make equal to the width of my skeletal model so I'll just go ahead and link this time apart our skeletal model to the structural still shade and I'll make sure that I use this thickness I'm sorry not the thickness but rather the width as the parameter notice now that we have a width parameter that I will use to control the base length now you can see that the base length of our structural steel shape is equal to the width of our our skeletal model if I go back up to the top level the assembly and we'll just quickly create some assembly constraints here and I'll just use my Hall drag method to quickly to quickly apply a few assembly constraints edit that constraint make it a flush all right so then we have a somewhat complete assembly and as you would expect if I go back and change some of the parameters in my skeletal model say we'll change the width to 48 and the base height to 72 with the vent diameter now being 20 you see we have a radically different skeletal model than we had before I'll return to my assembly I see I have a pending update if I replay the model you can see it updates and all the parts of dat appropriately thanks again for joining us for this inventor tips and tricks webinar if you found anything useful you'd like more than certainly we'd like to hear from him you can contact us at www.extracareanimalhospital.vetsuite.com

Channel: Repro Products

Views: 2,653

Keywords: repro, repro products, autodesk, architecture, engineering, architect, construction, how-to, guide, Inventor, Manufacturing, Skeletal vs Table Driven, Modeling

Id: CMApjCzcG0c

Length: 20min 58sec (1258 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 07 2016