Autodesk Manufacturing Product Blogs

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:33:00 -0500

Ahh, remember back to Inventor 2009…? Those were the days, right? Pull down menus, right click menus, updating panel bar, eh? No? Ok, I didn’t like it either, but I could get my work done, whip out a model in pretty decent time and all so it worked out well enough for me. I shouldn’t say I didn’t like it – I simply accepted it as what it was. Then the Ribbon with 2010, nowadays I feel like I’m modeling in a completely different package if I have to go back to ’09 – totally a fish out of water. (How often do you get to put in a nowadays, and make it work…?)

So what does that mean for my perception of the User Interface in Inventor 2010? It tells me I now have a stronger personal preference for the ribbon interface than I do for the previous. So seriously, is User Interface something that can be measured to be “better” than another one, or is it simply user preference? The product designers are going to kill me for this post, and I totally understand the logic behind fewer mouse clicks, less mouse travel, more intuitive. But I genuinely want to know what your gut tells you – is it simply user preference, or does User Interface matter to you guys?

How many people do you see that still have that ugly huge cursor going all the way across their screen in AutoCAD? We got rid of that thing in R14, but the first thing most people do is change the cursor size and the pickbox from 2 to 20…. What’s this object tracking thingy…eh, no matter I’ll just eyeball it with my huge cursor. Do people ignore what is possible with new user interface functionality, and turn it off so that they are initially more comfortable with the tool?

Quality questions here folks – let the discussion begin….

-Rob

Vault Explorer best practice - Automatic Column Sizing

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:56:00 -0500

Here's another setting that is not on with an initial install. Note the image below and the horizontal scroll bar. Depending on the resolution you run, this will either cut off a property column, or leave a margin of white space. But there's a solution...

Right click the top of any column and choose Customize View. Click the Other Settings button and place a check mark in the 'Automatic column sizing'.

Now the columns have a different feel, the scroll bar is gone, and no columns are cut off. I suggest doing this for the History window, Change Orders, and Items too.

-Brian Schanen

Vault Explorer best practice - Automatic Column Sizing

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:56:00 -0500

Right click the top of any column and choose Customize View. Click the Other Settings button and place a check mark in the 'Automatic column sizing'.

Now the columns have a different feel, the scroll bar is gone, and no columns are cut off. I suggest doing this for the History window, Change Orders, and Items too.

-Brian Schanen

Vault User Interface Tips

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:51:00 -0500

Today's we'll explore options to make your Vault Explorer session a little more streamlined.

Show working folder

In an out-of-the-box install of Vault, the location of the Working folder for a selected Vault folder is not displayed. I recommend turning this on to show the path up in the title bar. Go to Tools>Options and check the 'show working folder location' box.

For each Vault folder - including the root - the equivalent windows folder location is listed.

Collapse to first level components

Here's a handy workflow quite useful in the Uses tab in the History window. With a large assembly or multiple indented subcomponents, you may want to just get a display of the first level parts or assemblies. Of course you can scroll down the tree and collapse one at a time, but there's a much better way...

Right click the file at the top, and select Collapse All.

See the image below. This will pull all the files up...

Next click the plus sign + and the tree will expand with the first level displayed.

-Brian Schanen

Vault User Interface Tips

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:51:00 -0500

Today's we'll explore options to make your Vault Explorer session a little more streamlined.

Show working folder

For each Vault folder - including the root - the equivalent windows folder location is listed.

Collapse to first level components

Right click the file at the top, and select Collapse All.

See the image below. This will pull all the files up...

Next click the plus sign + and the tree will expand with the first level displayed.

-Brian Schanen

Official Autodesk Inventor Podcast Episode 40 - Constraints (part 1 of 2)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:39:00 -0500

This is a part one of a two part series that covers constraints. I received an email from a listener that requested an episode around constraints. This episode covers assembly constraints such as Mate, Angle, Tangent and Insert constraints. I will also cover how you can drive (animate) constraints as well as leverage adaptivity for items like a spring.

The second part of this series will cover Motion Constraints, Transitional Constraints and Constraint Sets.

Zune

Don't forget to leave feedback by adding a comment to this post or email me.

Official Autodesk Inventor Podcast Episode 40 - Constraints (part 1 of 2)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:39:00 -0500

The second part of this series will cover Motion Constraints, Transitional Constraints and Constraint Sets.

Zune

Don't forget to leave feedback by adding a comment to this post or email me.

Official Autodesk Inventor Podcast Episode 40 - Constraints (part 1 of 2)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:39:00 -0500

The second part of this series will cover Motion Constraints, Transitional Constraints and Constraint Sets.

Zune

Don't forget to leave feedback by adding a comment to this post or email me.

Official Autodesk Inventor Podcast Episode 40 - Constraints (part 1 of 2)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:39:00 -0500

The second part of this series will cover Motion Constraints, Transitional Constraints and Constraint Sets.

Zune

Don't forget to leave feedback by adding a comment to this post or email me.

Official Autodesk Inventor Podcast Episode 40 - Constraints (part 1 of 2)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:39:00 -0500

The second part of this series will cover Motion Constraints, Transitional Constraints and Constraint Sets.

Zune

Don't forget to leave feedback by adding a comment to this post or email me.

Official Autodesk Inventor Podcast Episode 40 - Constraints (part 1 of 2)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:39:00 -0500

The second part of this series will cover Motion Constraints, Transitional Constraints and Constraint Sets.

Zune

Don't forget to leave feedback by adding a comment to this post or email me.

Official Autodesk Inventor Podcast Episode 40 - Constraints (part 1 of 2)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:39:00 -0500

The second part of this series will cover Motion Constraints, Transitional Constraints and Constraint Sets.

Zune

Don't forget to leave feedback by adding a comment to this post or email me.

Official Autodesk Inventor Podcast Episode 40 - Constraints (part 1 of 2)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:39:00 -0500

The second part of this series will cover Motion Constraints, Transitional Constraints and Constraint Sets.

Zune

Don't forget to leave feedback by adding a comment to this post or email me.

Official Autodesk Inventor Podcast Episode 40 - Constraints (part 1 of 2)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:39:00 -0500

The second part of this series will cover Motion Constraints, Transitional Constraints and Constraint Sets.

Zune

Don't forget to leave feedback by adding a comment to this post or email me.

Tip from Imaginit - Multi Bodies and Vault

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:59:00 -0500

The team at Imaginit have a good video and workflow on the use of Multi Bodies and Autodesk Vault:

blogs.rand.com/manufacturing/2009/12/inventor-mult-body-modeling-how-to-use- with-autodesk-vault.html

Inventor Multi Body Parts with Autodesk Vault from Mark Flayler on Vimeo.

Tip from Imaginit - Multi Bodies and Vault

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:59:00 -0500

The team at Imaginit have a good video and workflow on the use of Multi Bodies and Autodesk Vault:

blogs.rand.com/manufacturing/2009/12/inventor-mult-body-modeling-how-to-use- with-autodesk-vault.html

Inventor Multi Body Parts with Autodesk Vault from Mark Flayler on Vimeo.

Plastic Part Design Basics - Nominal Wall Thickness

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:33:00 -0500

So the talk on the Ellipsis blog is predominantly mechanisms and gears and all things metal. Nothing wrong with that – but I’m going to bring a few plastics into the mix. Starting with this post, we’ll discuss some of the basic design rules for plastic parts to make sure (1) they work and (2) you can actually make ‘em. And since this is the first in this series, it makes sense to start at the beginning, with the likely first question you need answered when modeling your part being, “how thick should it be?”

And the answer is … well … it depends. Which is pretty much the same answer you will get to any good engineering problem. So now it’s time to figure out what it depends on and general rules for success.

Golden Rule - The nominal wall thickness needs to be as uniform as possible.

Why you ask? Warp. And I’m not talking about sexy warp like the propulsion systems on the Starship Enterprise. I’m talking good ol’ differential shrinkage (i.e. one area shrinks way more than the other). If you have different thicknesses in your part, the thin regions cool fast and shrink just a little, but the thick regions cool slowly and shrink a lot. This builds up a lot of internal stress in the part and before you know it, Boom! You just got warped.

And, as with all good engineering problems, rules are meant to be broken. How much leeway do you have? You can probably get away with about 15% variation from the nominal wall as long as you smooth the transition gradually (length of transition should be 3x the nominal wall thickness).

Rule #2 – Make it as thin as possible.

Duh. Thinner parts cool faster and use less material. Shorter cycle times and fewer grams of polycarb mean more $$$ for ~~you, the guy who saved all the money~~ your CEO’s end-of-year bonus.

But how do you figure out how thin you can possibly make it? Well, it depends. Sorry. Got to stop doing that. But it does. Here’s the short list:

· Impact resistance – if it’s going to get hit with a baseball bat, you got to know up front. Might want to add a millimeter or two and run an FEA analysis.

· Agency requirements – if the CIA is telling you it has to be 2mm, then it HAS to be 2mm. Don’t even think about changing it…they are listening. Usually requirements are not spec’d as a specific wall thickness – so your best bet again is to use some FEA analysis to ensure the part will meet the mechanical/electrical/thermal/etc. requirements and increase the wall thickness iteratively until you reach an acceptable safety factor.

· Injection pressure – here we’re talking manufacturability. Melted plastic has the consistency of maple syrup, so as you can imagine it’s going to take a significant amount of pressure to push that through the mold and into the cavity. Typical molding presses have about 180MPa of pressure available – if your part requires anything more, the mold won’t fill all the way and you’ll be left with short shot. Using injection molding simulation software should tell you what you’ll need early on though.

Obviously this is just a start – we’ll dive into more details and strategies for reducing wall thickness like adding ribs and material selection, but we’ll save that for another day. We’ll also discuss molding defects – many of which can magically happen when some of the aforementioned rules are ignored.

Green Ocean Energy

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0500

This Aberdeen, Scotland-based maker of wave energy devices uses Autodesk Digital Prototyping software to develop groundbreaking designs.

Syncromatics

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Syncromatics uses Autodesk® Inventor® software and Autodesk Digital Prototyping solutions to provide smart transit information.

Lynch Fluid Controls (Canada)

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Canada's Lynch Fluid Controls, a global leader in the design and manufacture of standard and custom hydraulic manifold assemblies, relies on Autodesk® Inventor® software and Autodesk Digital Prototyping.