 |
This Month
Micro Concepts Inventor Tools
Tip
AutoCAD Tips
Vault/Productstream Tips Downloads, Hotfixes, Service Packs & Other Issues New Inventor Hardware Graphics Database 02/11/2007 and Inventor Professional 2008 Hotfix We set you a Design challenge last month, which was to create the featured assembly in the least amount of parts. How many parts did you use? !!BREAKING NEWS!! - Micro Concepts Expands West! This month we bring you the breaking news that Micro Concepts has acquired the Autodesk Mechanical Solutions Division of Universal CAD. The new acquisition will be based in our new Reading office. There will be further news on this next month. For now here's news on further expansion within our Cambridge team. Technical Team Increases in Strength This month we welcome a new member to Micro
Concepts, Michael Timmis. Internal Sales Boost Numbers The sales team are also welcoming a new member of staff this month. Dwayne Dunkley joins the internal sales team from a distinguished 7 year engineering career in the RAF, and as a member of the services boxing team. We're sure he'll prove to be a knockout at Micro Concepts as well. Christmas Support Cover It's getting close to that time of year again.
We know the majority of you close between Christmas and New Year but we will
be open and operating over this
period. Our support line will close as normal at 5:00 p.m. on
Friday 21st December and our service will then be available as
follows: Mitring 3 Frame Members in One Corner In frame generator you may like to mitre the corner's of this frame so that the three members that meet in this corner are all mitred to one another.
To achieve this simply apply a mitre to each corner in turn. Starting with a normal mitre between the two top members as shown in the following image.
Once a mitre is applied to the two top members of the frame the same can be applied to the other members. Select the top left member and the bottom member to create a mitre between them.
Apply the mitre to the two members shown above, then the final part of the corner needs to be added. Now select the top right member and the bottom member to apply a mitre between these two members. This finishes the 3 way mitre at this corner.
Once applied this will then give you three individual mitres in the browser but they will all relate to each other to give you the required mitred corner joint.
If you ever needed a small material thickness joggle in a sheet metal part and wondered how to easily do this then read on.
In previous releases of Inventor you could easily add a flange with an angle of zero to give the above result. However in Inventor 2008 this does not produce a joggle, it now just adds material to the existing face. This is due to the new bend position options and the default bend position.
To create a joggle as per previous versions of Inventor select the more options, found by pressing the button with two chevrons on in the bottom right of the dialog box. In here there is the option to 'Use Old Method'.
Once this option is selected the and the angle is set to zero it will give the required joggle when the OK button is pressed. Creating a Bend Between Two Faces In previous versions of Inventor a bend could be applied between two offset faces. This would join the two faces with a double bend in accordance to some user defined settings. The settings could be 'Fix Edges', which created the bend between the extents of the current two face's, '45 or 90 degrees' which would extend or shorten the unselected edge to create the double bend at which ever angle was selected; The final option was 'Full Radius' which would create a half circular radius from one face to the other.
Although this method is still available in Inventor 2008, there is a quicker easier way to produce this double bend. When creating the second offset face, select the 'Edges Button' on the right side of the face dialog box. Then select the edge on the first face you wish to join to.
Once the required edge is selected the 'more options' area of the face dialog will activate. In here the different options for the double bend such as 'Fix Edges', '45 degrees', '90 degrees' and 'Full Radius' can be selected as per in the normal double bend option.
2D Dimension Option for Inventor Drawings When placing dimensions on a view in an Inventor 2008 drawing sometimes a 3D isometric dimension will be placed, not the 2D dimension as expected. This is normally caused by the assembly not being grounded in a position square to the assembly origin planes. Inventor thinks you are placing a 3D isometric view in relation to these assembly origin planes. A method to correct the assembly file was described in the September Bulletin. However this 3D dimension can be easily overridden by right clicking before placing the dimensions and changing the Annotation plane to use the 'Sheet Plane', thus placing a 2D dimension not the 3D option.
If you do not use 3D isometric dimensions at all this option can be deactivated so that a 2D dimension is always placed. To do this you will need to edit the registry in the following manner;
However if you do later create an isometric view and wish to place a 3D dimension on this you can right click on the view and change the General Dimension Type to 'Projected'. Micro Concepts Tools Tip Using Open Explorer Button in MC Tools Ever been working on a file in Inventor and needed to quickly open the Windows Explorer folder where this file exists but not entirely sure where this is?
Well with the help of the 'Open Explorer' tool
on the Micro Concepts Inventor Tools 2008 tool bar you can. This
will open a new Windows Explorer dialog box in the folder
of the file currently active in Inventor. Thus allowing you to
quickly access the folder without having to trawl through many levels of folders. Copy and Paste Slow in AutoCAD 2008 When using the copy and paste functionality within AutoCAD 2008 it may take longer to complete the operation than in previous versions. This is commonly due to the fact that the drawing contains several annotation scales. To remove the annotation scales, allowing a faster copy and paste;
Vault/Productstream Tips Migrating Autodesk Inventor Data in Autodesk Vault Another white paper from Autodesk, this time discussing the process of migrating Inventor data into Vault 2008.http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/migrating_autodesk_inventor_data_in_autodesk_vault.pdf Downloads, Service Packs & Updates New
Downloads, Service Packs & Updates released this Month.
Major service packs and fixes in bold. Inventor Inventor Suite/Professional 2008 R11 and greater Graphics Database 02/11/2007 Inventor Series/Professional 11 Mechanical Desktop AutoCAD Mechanical No Updates This Month AutoCAD Electrical No Updates This Month AutoCAD No Updates This Month Vault/Productstream No Updates This Month Last month we asked how many parts were needed to produce one of the following two assemblies. The two assemblies are complete sets of metric or imperial Hex Keys as pictured below.
The least number of parts required to produce these assemblies is actually TWO part files! That's right TWO part files to produce both these assemblies and all of the individual different sized Hex Keys within them. How I hear you ask, that's at least 23 different instances in these two assemblies? If you couldn't produce these two different assemblies using just two parts files then maybe you should give some though to attending our Inventor Part 2 training course and maximise your productivity with the powerful tools that you have at your fingertips. To see the syllabus or book a Part 2 course see the Training section of our website.
This month we would like to ask you to provide the design
challenges for our new engineer Michael Timmis. email details of
your design challenge to
support@microconcepts.co.uk to test out Michael's inventor
skills. We'll have some Micro Concepts goodies for the best
ones. |
Contact Details
|
Published by Micro Concepts Ltd Copyright 2007 Micro Concepts Ltd. All rights reserved. This Newsletter is provided by Micro Concepts and may be used exclusively for informational purposes by the addressee only.
www.microconcepts.co.uk I 01223 716200 |
