A couple of weeks back I blogged about the continued connectivity between Autodesk 2011 products (click the link if you missed this!) http://www.technology4design.com/?p=805. To further expand on this I wanted to take a look at the adsk file transfer from Inventor 2011 to Revit MEP 2011. The model below has been designed within Inventor and contains a huge number of components (2740 parts!) with a high level of detail. This is great for digital prototyping and manufacture but not so good for AutoCAD and Revit MEP as the model would be far too complex.

The first stage is to run the Inventor assembly through the shrinkwrap process. This will remove all components of a certain size and cap holes within the limits you specify. Inventor will then create a single part which remains linked back to the assembly so the shrinkwrapped file can update if your design changes.

Once this is done we then use the AEC Exchange tools within Inventor to prepare the model for consumption in Revit MEP. Inventor can output files to Revit Architecture, Structure and MEP and also AutoCAD Architecture and AutoCAD MEP.

Within the AEC Exchange tools you define your various connectors such as pipe, duct, Cable tray etc. You also specify the component type and information that you want to transfer to Revit MEP.

The model is then transfered as an adsk file. Notice that all the materials have been mapped from Inventor to Revit using the new Autodesk Materials library. I have then used the compoent tool in Revit MEP to place the Chiller on the Roof as shown below. This is an exciting workflow which will enable manufactures to publish models quickly and effectively and start to create a large library of up to date equipment for Revit and AutoCAD MEP.

The next blog will outline transfers to Civil3D.

Lawrence

Over the last few years, Autodesk have been developing cross platform interoperability between a number of their products for the transfer of intelligent data that spans a number of traditional Autodesk ‘silos’ that are made up of 5 divisions, the Manufacturing Solutions Division (MSD), The Infrastructure Solutions Division (ISD), the Building Solutions Division (BSD) and the Media and Entertainment Division (M&E) and finally the Platform Technology Division (PTD) which looks after AutoCAD, the base for many Autodesk Vertical Applications. Whilst this may be a convenient business model for Autodesk it does not lend itself to the many design consultants and industries that depend on the need to transfer intelligent data between the various products.

A good example of the above are the many manufacturing companies using Autodesk Inventor to create digital prototypes of products that are destined for use within the construction industry. Many of our customers are utilising the parametric technology of Autodesk Inventor to create digital models of bridges and tunnels which ultimately need to reside in Civil3D or Revit Structure for coordination with terrain models and then on to 3DS Max to create realistic visual outputs. Other examples are Building services equipment such as Air handling units, or architectural items such as cladding, doors, windows etc.

Autodesk have been hard at work developing the interoperability between various platforms and have some new additions lurking within the 2011 products.

One new workflow is the intelligent transfer between Autodesk Inventor and Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis.

A frame can be created within Autodesk Inventor and then analysed within the Inventor Frame Analysis environment. Rigid links and boundary conditions can be added as well as some basic loading. You can then Publish the Structural model using the Export command and then transfer the Model to Robot Structural Analysis. The Member type, size and loading are transferred as well as the rigid links and boundary conditions.

The frame can then be transferred directly to Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis for a complete structural analysis and integration with larger framing systems or Revit Structure 2011 if needed.

My next Blog will outline the extensions to the .adsk file transfer and the common materials library that most Autodesk 2011 3D products are now utilising. Here is the link: http://www.technology4design.com/?p=847

LawrenceH

Just a quick post to wet your appetite with some of the new features inside Inventor 2011.

One of the many cool new features is the ability to use real time rendering directly within the working environment. This is using advanced image based lighting environments and a consolidated common materials library shared with AutoCAD, Showcase, 3DS Max and the Revit Platform.

Direct editing of translated data from products such as CATIA, ProE and Solidworks is now made much easier within the Fusion Editor which ships with Inventor 2011. Edit the solids with ease and then Inventor Fusion will recognise parametric features!

Here is a quick list of some of the enhancements in Inventor 2011.

1. Assemblies

New Assemble tool using simple object snaps. Improved assembly performance. Constraint limits when dragging components in real time.

2. Data Translation

Import CATIA V4 and V5 file formats. Use Fusion to edit and Recognise parametric features.

3. Drawings

Replace the  base view. Architectural Sheet sizes. Improved Hatching. Chain Dimensioning. AutoCAD Block Manager

4. Frame Generator

Publish custom Notch features. Links to ROBOT Structural Analysis and new frame analysis tools using the ROBOT analysis engine.

5. iLogic

iLogic is now fully integrated within Inventor allowing for rule based, truly intelligent  parts and assemblies

6. Parts

Improved workflow with heads up design. Use dynamic input for sketching.

There are too many features to list here but you can look forward to a number of videos from excitech which will showcase some of the new features. In the meantime have a look at the following link for more information.

Autodesk Inventor 2011

Enjoy,

Lawrence

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’s top selling 3D mechanical design software, Inventor, is soon to be available as an LT version that is bundled with AutoCAD LT. Autodesk Inventor LT will deliver powerful 3D parametric part design, automated DWG drawing views and the ability to import and export to a variety of file formats such as CATIA, Solidworks and Pro Engineer as well as full DWG support. The AEC exchange capability is also included for transferring models to Revit and AutoCAD Architecture and AutoCAD MEP.

This will provide a great opportunity for those of you that want to explore the capabilities of parametric single part design and others who already have Inventor and need a cost effective method of creating and editing parts and producing drawings.

For more information check the following link from Autodesk

http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/invlt10_broch_overview_us.pdf

Inventor 2010 has the biggest set of new and improved features in the products history. I always get fairly excited near to the new product release and try and guess what features I would include within the new releases. There were so many in this release that it has taken a few weeks to fully evaluate and test each new tool. Recently I have been investigating the Finite Element Analysis module which is included within the Inventor for Simulation product.

Previous releases relied on the ANSYS technology for single part FEA. Inventor 2010 is now using some of the Plassotech technology, a company acquired by Autodesk in 2007 to support the vision of a digital prototype. One area that I have always found interesting is the ability to create a part or assembly model and allow Inventor to iterate through a set of parametric studies and generate a group of results that optimises certain design parameters. A model created within Inventor is always based on parameters, either automatic parameters such as dimensions or user defined parameters.

As an example, I have created a simple Gallows bracket. I have a loading of 1 tonne over the top surface of the bracket. I want to find the optimal position of the brace. I have added my set of dimensional values of the brace for the parameters d8 and d9 and added a set of material thicknesses for d0.

Using the slider bars I can now iterate through the various results to find the most appropriate solution for my bracket. Below the optimal solution has been found using an 8mm material thickness and 180mm dimension with a safety factor of 1.4.

I have found this a great way to quickly optimise designs and gain an understanding of the structural performance of my components.

For more information and training visit

http://www.excitech.co.uk/training/training_course.asp?C_id=223&prod=Autodesk_Inventor_2010__Transitioning_from_2009

Lawrence

Over the next few weeks I will be sharing some exciting information and processes to exchange data from Revit Structure and Revit Architecture to Inventor for the purpose of Digital Fabrication. Autodesk Labs have released a new tool for Inventor called iCopy which allows a skeletal model to be patterned across a set of parametric and adaptive rails which will allow a basic design to ‘adapt’ to irregular geometry. In the example below, I have imported a model from Revit Structure to Inventor and applied a curtain panel to the concrete frame with full manufacturing details for each curtain panel.

Watch this space for updates!

Many architects and designers are making use of Rhinoceros (Rhino) for 3D conceptual modelling. One of Rhino’s biggest strengths is in its ability to easily model and define complex surfaces and forms for conceptual purposes. This is great for producing models for visualisation and form finding but very challenging to turn the NURBS surfaces into realistic shapes that are ready for detailing and fabrication.

One possibility is to take the Rhino model into Autodesk Inventor to allow an engineering model to be developed. Autodesk Labs have been hard at work creating a Plug-In for Inventor that allows for a Rhino model to be directly imported into Inventor. Here is a surface model that has been created in Rhino V4.

When importing a Rhino model, Inventor has several options that you can specify. You can import solids, surfaces, Wires or points. For the above model I have just imported the surfaces. Once this has been imported into Inventor the model will either be a solid body or a composite surface. The Autodesk Inventor construction tools can then be used to stitch the surfaces into solids and then rationalise the design.

In the model shown below I have simply stitched the surfaces to form a solid body.

For those of you with Inventor, you can download and test the Plug-In free from Autodesk Labs.

http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/rhino_import/

Considering quite a few sheet metal shops are experiencing a bit of a downturn at the moment it maybe worthwhile looking at faster, more efficient methods of sheet metal development and design. I still remember spending many hours on a drawing board at college trying to work out a square to round transition and truncations. This was a lengthy process on a drawing board and not much quicker on AutoCAD due to having to work out the development and plan and the bending orders. Some of you may have heard of Autodesk Inventor or even used it. The 2010 version has had numerous improvements and one such improvement is to the sheet metal environment. You can now generate lofted flanges which make sheet metal design a snip.

Let’s take a few minutes to look at the workflow and benefits of using inventor.

We basically start in a sketch and define the profiles that we are to loft through.

It is then time to use the new feature, Lofted Flange. This new tool allows the flange to be developed using two manufactured processes. The flange can either be formed in a brake press with folds or die formed. For this example I am using the brake press method. You can also control the distance between facets, the angle or have inventor automatically control the number of facets based on a tolerance you input.

Next we select both the open profiles and Inventor will do the rest of the hard work.

You can then add additional flanges and holes as required. It’s worth bearing in mind that the whole model is completely parametric and based on sheet metal bend rules which are style based.

Once you have you model fully developed you are then ready to produce a flat pattern and some manufacturing drawings. The flat pattern is literally one mouse click away. Inventor will work out the folding sequence and also calculate the length and width of sheet metal required for the development. If there are any clashes whilst unfolding the model, Inventor will produce a suitable warning!

Finally, below you can see a drawing showing the flat pattern development and a 3D view. This can then be exported to a DXF file for manufacture.