Many of you may already be familiar with Inventor or at least may have seen it before. It remains a very powerful tool for 3D parametric design and what Autodesk are terming as a Digital Prototyping solution.

It has recently been announced that an LT version is to be released in the UK bundled with AutoCAD LT, this will be shipping very shortly.  I have now spend a few days looking at the functionality and limitations of this product both for the manufacturing and Construction industries.

Basically, Inventor LT is intended as an entry level 3D parametric design system that will hopefully convert the people and companies that think 3D Design is difficult, time consuming or financially not cost effective. It is suitable for the smallest of companies with the occasional need for 3D design up to multi national organisations that need to supplement their existing design solutions with a parametric design system.

Inventor LT shares the same core technology for part design and 2D design as its bigger brother but does not include assembly modelling or sheet metal design. It does include the Inventor Studio module and the AEC exchange module for creating components that can be consumed by the Revit  suit of products as well as AutoCAD Architecture and

AutoCAD MEP.

In the above image I have used Inventor LT to create a parametric phone case and then used the draft analysis tool and surface analysis tools to check cross sections and for imperfections within the solids surfaces. The major benefit of this workflow is the feature history which you can use to edit and modify the design and be confident that the 2D drawing views and annotations will update automatically.

Above you can see the powerful tools within Inventor LT to create and annotate drawing views including hole tables and the ability to plan and show tolerances on dimensions. Many manufacturing and design companies will benefit from the ability to have a few seats of Inventor LT to complement their existing Inventor seats. It is certainly a more affordable way of increasing your design capability.

I also tried a few examples around Architectural design and had a go at producing something to resemble the Birds nest stadium. This was a fairly quick design that took just over one hour and allows full parametric control over the form and the 3D sketches and sweeps. This could be imported into a Revit massing family to complete the design.

Here I have produced a set of 2D drawings and a rendering from Inventor Studio for a plastic casing for a hair dryer. The above drawing is in DWG format, a great feature of Inventor.

Finally you can use Inventor LT to create content for the Revit platform, AutoCAD Architecture and AutoCAD MEP in the adsk file format. Inventor LT gives the ability to create all the necessary connectors for Ducts, Pipes and other MEP related equipment.

For more information and webinars click the following link. I will be running a series of seminars for Manufacturing and the construction industry over the web!

http://www.excitech.co.uk/news/inventor_lt_mechanical_web_seminar.asp

LawrenceH

Autodesk have just released a new module for the Revit Platform called Model Review. This is part of the Subscription Advantage Packs that have been released for a multitude of Autodesk products.  Unfortunately, at the present time, most of the Revit packs are not working due to installation problems. I will notify you when this is resolved!

The Revit Model Review tool is essentially a BIM checking utility which allows you to check certain parameters and families within your model for particular value ranges. When we think of a CAD Standard we generally expect to see references to line weights, line types, text styles etc within the standard. This is all well and good for typical 2D drawings but what about BIM models? The BIM model will contain a multitude of information that we will likely use for the design, construction and management. It is therefore vital that this data is present and correct but how can you check that the extended data exists? How can you check that door heights and widths meet your design standards or that rooms volumes have been correctly defined before running airflow calculations?

Using the Revit Model Review.

The tools provided are simple to use and understand but provide powerful checking and verification functionality. The first step is to set up the standard and the various criteria to check. This is done within the Manage command. You add various checks to a standard. Below I have added a check for Views with Hidden Elements. Other checks may include minimum and maximum sizes for Revit elements or that Spaces and Room areas are correctly defined.

You then continue to add your required checks and configure the check properties, filters and Pass and Fail Messages that you want Revit to provide.

To assist CAD/BIM managers, there is an option to check multiple Revit projects and also linked files.

Here you can see the results of the check. A report has been presented showing the Views that have hidden elements and the quantity of hidden objects. A nice feature of the checker is that you can repair the issues automatically by clicking the Fix icon shown in the dialog box below.

In summery I think this will be an area that Autodesk will need to expand into and this is certainly a good start. With so much design and construction information now stored within the Revit model and the fact that many customers are directly linking the Revit models to design tools such as ROBOT this is a vital area that needs addressing.

Food for thought,

I would be interested to hear any comments that you have around this subject.

Lawrence

Metal Wood Framer (MWF) is a Stud wall generator that can be added on to Revit Structure 2010 or Revit Architecture 2010 from StrucSoft solutions (see link at the end of this blog). It offers many powerful macros and editing tools to provide a stud layout model, construction drawings and CNC output for manufacture.

The first step is to create your walls and window and door openings. You do this by using any standard Revit wall, window and door style as show above. On the Add Ins panel you will find the MWF ribbon as shown below. To get a quick Stud Wall click the Create button and then select a wall in Revit.

For fast and efficient production you can create wall template files which allow you to set stud configurations based on wall styles and then use the Quick create tool which automatically applies the preconfigured styles to the walls.

Above you can see the MWF stud wall settings dialog box. You can select the basic construction configurations here. Once you have selected the create button then you will be able to set the structural members that will make up the Stud wall construction. You can set general tolerances for the timber and steel members and add in extra structural members as required. Once this is done you are then ready to create a drawing. The only setback with the drawings are that they are created as drafting views and are not associated to the model so you would need to recreate these if the stud wall changes.

The drawing and cutting lists below has been generated automatically with all the relevant tags and dimensions attached. Not bad for a few minutes work.

Obviously there is much more to the product than I have shown here but hopefully it has got you interested enough to download a trial copy.

For more information and a 30 day trial check out the link below;

http://www.strucsoftsolutions.com/mwf.asp

Have Fun,

Regards,

Lawrence