This Month

News
New addition to Micro Concepts Team
Autodesk Acquires PlassoTech
ADMS 2008 Service Pack 1
AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT 2008 Service Pack 1
Autodesk Design Review 2008 Service Pack 1
DWF Writer For Microsoft and Other Applications
Autodesk Inventor Podcast & Skill Builders?

Tips & Tricks
Inventor Tips
Annotating Hole Centre Marks on Punches
Assembly Models Not Square to Origin Planes
Linking a Cost/Length to a Parts List From Model Properties
Isolating Failed Constraints to Edit or Delete
Tip When Creating Pip Runs In Inventor Professional
Creating Non-aligned Section Views

Micro Concepts Hardware Tip - Improve the speed of your PC – For free!

AutoCAD Tips - Moving Paperspace Objects to Modelspace 

Vault/Productstream Tips - Undoing Another Users Check Out

Downloads, Hotfixes, Service Packs & Other Issues

1 Inventor Professional 2008 hotfixes, 1 Inventor 11 hotfix, 1 Mechanical Desktop 2008 hotfix, AutoCAD 2008 SP1, AutoCAD LT 2008 SP1, ADMS SP1.

Tea Break

The result of last month's competition and some Autodesk trivia to celebrate this month's 25th Anniversary of Autodesk's inauguration.

 News

New Micro Concepts Team Member

Earlier this month Kerrie Braybrook joined the Micro Concepts team. Kerrie will be carrying out the administration of our Autodesk Authorised Training Center, including organising and booking of training courses. Kerrie will also be involved in the administration of support and subscription contracts.

Autodesk Acquires PlassoTech

Autodesk have announced the acquisition of PlassoTech, a leading supplier of analysis and simulation software for the mechanical design market. Current plans are to integrate PlassoTech technology into the Inventor product family over time bringing many distinct advantages including:

The ability to perform analysis on entire assemblies, as well as individual parts
The ability to perform analysis based on real-world structural and thermal conditions
Advanced-ease-of use and performance superiority with a fully integrated simulation solution

The Autodesk press release on this acquisition can be found at the following link: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?id=10027077&siteID=123112&preview=1&linkID=7029489

ADMS 2008 Service Pack 1

AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT 2008 Service Pack 1

Service pack 1 is now available for AutoCAD 2008 and AutoCAD LT 2008. Please note that these are individual service packs for either full AutoCAD 2008 or AutoCAD LT 2008. Links to both service packs are available in our Downloads section below.

Design Review 2008 Service Pack 1

DWF Writer For Microsoft and Other Applications

DWF publishing allows easy exchange and sharing of data between different design packages and environments. With the free DWF writer, 2D and 3D data can be easily shared no matter what design application is being used. Even Microsoft office documents can be published to DWF and simply dragged and dropped into existing DWF files, containing other design information, using the free Design Review 2008 application. The free dwf writer can be found at the following link:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=8683923&siteID=123112

Autodesk Inventor Podcasts & Skill Builders

From the official blog of the Autodesk Inventor Product Management Team In the Machine, comes this month's Autodesk Inventor Video Podcast.

Standard Parts Tips (Video Podcast Episode 16)

Skill Builders

The Autodesk Inventor Skill Builder site has 3 new skill builders added this month:

Spur Gears Part 1: Designing a Spur Gear Connection Based on Known Dimensions
Learn how to design a spur gear connection. (August 2007)

 Tips and Tricks

 Autodesk Inventor Tips

Annotating Hole Centre Marks on Punches

If you are using a punch feature that places multiple holes as one feature in a sheet metal environment you may wish to annotate these holes in a 2D drawing using a centre mark. However when you place a centre mark it will automatically snap to the insertion point of the punch which was specified when the punch was created, as shown below.

Normally when annotating a punch feature you only require the punch centre mark, which is the default Inventor behaviour. However in this example we are using the punch tool in Inventor to quickly place multiple holes in a standard arrangement. In manufacture they will be produced as separate holes rather than a single punch. In this case we need to tell Inventor to ignore the punch centre and treat each hole as an individual hole. To do this select the 'Center Mark' tool and then right mouse click on one of the holes. In the right click menu you can remove the tick next to Punch Centers. This will allow the centre mark tool to place a normal mark on the hole centre not the punch centre.

Assembly Models Not Square to Origin Planes

When an assembly model is not aligned with the origin plane you may you have to place a drawing view using the 'Change view orientation' option. You might subsequently find that placing dimensions is giving strange results owing to the assembly not being aligned with the origin planes. This misalignment can often occur if the original grounded component is deleted or ungrounded and leads to the assembly being rotated slightly about the origin planes. Therefore when dimensioning what appears to be a view square on a face, Inventor may, in some cases, try to place an isometric dimension, giving an unwanted result.

To correct this will require realigning the assembly. If any components are grounded, right click on them and remove the tick next to grounded. You can then add some constraints between the assembly origin planes and the component you wish to be aligned with the origin planes. The component can then be regrounded, and an assembly update should snap all other constrained components to the new position.

Once the assembly has been realigned the drawing view can be updated and corrected to show the correct dimension required. To do this may require deleting and replacing the view.

Linking a Cost/Distance to a Parts List From The Model Properties

If your company produces a component sold by a distance or uses a material purchased by a distance you may like to include a running cost/distance in the parts list. This can be achieved by creating a few simple user parameters in the component's parameters.

To include a calculation, such as cost/length, in a parts list you need to add user parameters to the required part file. If you open the parameters of a part you can add a unitless parameter called, for example, cost_per_metre and put a value in for this. You will need a model parameter for the length of the part which is logical to call 'length' and use this length parameter to drive the model size. You will also need to add another parameter for cost. In the equation for this cost parameter you can define as length*cost_per_metre. This will then give you the cost value for the model. In the parameters you will need to tick the 'export' boxes for any parameters you require as iProperties, for inclusion in the parts list.

Now you can add a parts list which once placed can be edited and via the column chooser, you can add the custom properties for cost and cost_per_metre. You could also define this in the styles editor for a common parts list style able to be used across multiple files.

Isolating Failed Constraints to Edit or Delete

If there are some constraints that have failed in an assembly, these need to be resolved or removed in order to continue working successfully in Inventor. An easy way to see and identify failed constraints is to change the model browser view from the assembly view to the modelling view. Once in the modelling view, there is a constraints folder at the top of the tree that can be expanded to show a list of constraints.

To change to the modelling view select the drop down arrow to the right of the words Assembly View in the model browser. The Modelling View can then be selected and the constraints folder viewed. Failed constraints will highlight with the triangular exclamation icon.

Tip When Creating Pip Runs In Inventor Professional

When defining pipe runs, you can drag the cursor along the axis and the tooltip reports the length of the section.

The axis may not be long enough to visualise the required full length. To facilitate this, the size of the axis can be adjusted by pressing the + and – keys.

Creating Non-aligned Section Views

In an Inventor 2D drawing, section views can be created from existing views. The section views, by default, are aligned to their parent view. This alignment can be broken by right mouse clicking on the section view once created and selecting break alignment.

If you know this is a requirement, an easier and quicker way to do this is to hold down the Ctrl key when creating the section view. This will automatically break the alignment, allowing the view to be placed anywhere on the sheet.

Micro Concepts Hardware Tips

Improve the speed of your PC – For free!

The performance of your PC could be improved by defragmenting your hard disk, which arranges the files more efficiently on your disk, so it becomes faster for Windows to access the data. This free performance gain can be achieved by running the Windows Defrag utility during a lunch break or overnight each month. The windows Defrag tool is found in Start / All Programs / Accessories / System Tools / Disk Defragmenter.

If you want to really keep your hard disk in tip top condition, you could purchase a defragmenter that will run continuously to optimise your system. One such application is Diskeeper available from www.diskeeper.com. From the diskeeper web site comes the following further explanation of defragmentation

AutoCAD Tips

Moving Paper space Objects to Model space

If some objects have been drawn in a layout and you wish to move these to model space a command called CHSPACE can be used. This was previously an extra tool as part of the Express tools options, but from AutoCAD 2007 onwards this is one of the standard AutoCAD commands.

 Vault/Productstream Tips

Undoing Another Users Check Out

Have you had files checked out by another user that you now need to edit but that user is on leave or absent?
In vault you need to undo the check out of these files. This used to be a lengthy process in previous versions of Vault, requiring an administrator to reset the users password in order to log in as that user and undo the check out. This is now much simpler in Vault 2008. An administrator can now log in and undo the file reservation just by going to the file menu and selecting File Control, Remove Reservation.

 Vault/Productstream 

Autodesk Data Management Server 2008 Service Pack 1