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This
Month
 News
DWF
Extension & Inventor Tools 11 Webinars,
Upgrade LT to Inventor, AutoCAD Mechanical
or AutoCAD Electrical - Special Promotion
Tips & Tricks
Inventor Tips
Rendered View Quality,
Sub Assemblies - Part visibility and colour
settings ignored,
Export Faces to DWG,
Edge Display Colours
Inventor Tools
Tooltip of the Month
Open Parent command in IDW environment
AutoCAD Tips -
CONVERTOLDMATERIALS
command,
1603 Error Installing AutoCAD,
Layout Tabs Missing
Miscellaneous
Tips - Embedding dwfs in a
web page
Downloads,
Hotfixes, Service Packs &
Other Issues
AutoCAD 2007 Service Pack 1, Vault DWF
hotfix
Tea Break
This month we've got an idea for a more
creative way of recycling all that waste
paper.
News
Inventor Tools & Inventor DWF Extension
Webinars
We've made a
change to the training seminar we advertised
last month that we originally intended
holding at our Great Shelford offices.
 We understand
it can sometimes be difficult to find the
time to be out of the office for the day,
especially for what is essentially just a 2
hour training session. For most of you the
time travelling will be longer than this. So
to try to make this event accessible to more
of you, we will be running this
seminar as two separate one hour online
webinars.
Further
details and registration for the dwf
extension webinar, which will take place on
the original seminar date
of Friday 29th September 2006 can be found
here.
 The Inventor
Tools webinar will now take place on Friday
13th October. Further details can be found
here.
The seminar
at our offices will now no longer take place
(sorry for those of you that did want to get
out of the office for the day).
Registration
for these events is open to all contract
holders.
LT Upgrade Promotion
For those of
you that haven't seen the recent sales
information coming from Micro Concepts there
is currently an extremely good offer
available for existing AutoCAD LT users to
upgrade to Inventor, Mechanical or
Electrical. If you have a copy of LT it is a
very cost effective time to upgrade to a
more productive Autodesk solution. Further
details can be found
here.
Tips and Tricks
Autodesk Inventor Tips
Rendered View Quality in
IDW
We've still
had many reports from you of an Inventor 11
issue we highlighted in an earlier Technical
bulletin so we thought it worthwhile to
repeat it again. The problem is that since
upgrading to Inventor 11 the quality of
rendered images in idw files has reduced
considerably. This is because of a change in
one of the options. In the document
settings, on the drawing tab, there is an
option to use a bitmap for shaded views. By
using a bitmap to represent the shaded view
the performance of generation, opening and
updating of rendered views in an idw is
increased considerably. However this
increase in performance is offset by a
reduction in quality and can also result in
other minor display and print quality issues
on the idw. The default setting for this
option is 'always' and existing idw files
defaulted to this prior to service pack 1.
After service pack 1 existing pre Inventor
11 drawings default to offline only. If you
encounter quality issues check this setting
first and set it to offline only. Also ensure that your template is
also set to offline only. This is a
document setting so is stored in the
document file and is individual to each
file. An example of the quality difference
is shown below.
Sub Assemblies - Part
Visibility and Colour settings ignored
Have you ever inserted a sub assembly and
found the colours and visibility you set in
the sub assembly are ignored? This is
because colours and visibility are stored in
the design views of the sub assembly. When
you insert a sub assembly the design view
that is automatically used is the master
design view. This design view has all
objects visible and has no colour overrides
so will not necessarily reflect the last
active design view of the sub assembly which
is likely to have the view named 'default'
as the current active design view. However
you can set the design view to be used. When
you place the component choose the options
button on the open dialogue box. This will
show the representations dialogue (below)
where you can choose the design view
representation to use. You can also select
the associative check box so your parent
assembly reflects any future changes made to
the design view in the sub assembly.
However if
you've already placed the component and
forgotten the options button how do you
change the design view representation. If
you look in the representations folder for
the subassembly in the browser the design
views don't appear to be available. However
if you right click on the representation
folder you can then choose the
representation option from the context menu
which then takes you back to the same
representations dialogue box where you can
choose the design view you require. After
selecting the design view the view
representation then appears in the browser.
 
Export Faces to DWG
If you ever need the outline of an Inventor
Part face in AutoCAD, you can right click
on the face and select 'Export Face'
Then you can save as a DWG or a DXF and open
it in AutoCAD
This also
works for an inventor sketch. Right click on
the sketch in the browser where you can then
also use the export face as command.
Edge Display Colour
In Inventor
11 the default edge display colours have
changed slightly, as have the background
colours. For light backgrounds the edge
display is typically black, and for dark
back grounds the display is typically a
light grey. This edge display can be changed
to any desired colour you wish. This is not
a new function in 11 but has perhaps gone
unnoticed in the past as the edge display
was always black by default.
To specify the edge display colour open
application options and select the display
tab. On the right is the Active section
where there is the edge display tick box. To
the right of this is another tick box,
which, when ticked, gives the option to use
a user defined edge display colour.
To define a
custom colour click the black box to the
right of the tick box. This will allow you
to select from a list of colours or create a
custom colour using RGB numbers.
Lookout for the Toggle Edge Display command
in the new Inventor Tools 11, currently in
beta, which will be released very soon.
Inventor
Tools Tooltip Of The Month
Open idw
On an
Inventor model (ipt or iam) there is an
additional command added to the panel bar,
called 'Open idw'. This command can be used
for opening a related idw from the model.
This command
is only enabled if an idw file of the same
name in the same directory as the model
exists. It will be this idw that is opened
when you select the command.
If you name your idw files the same as your
models and keep them in the same folder this
can be a useful timesaving shortcut tool to
quickly access the idw.
In
the current version of the tools the command
is called 'Open idw' but in the new version
of the tools it will be called 'Open
Parent'. The functionality will be the same
in the new version but will expand in the
future to allow vault integration.
AutoCAD Tips
ConvertoldMaterials
Command
In
AutoCAD 2007 lights and materials have been
significantly updated. Materials have new
properties, such as translucency and
self-illumination and materials can also be
assigned By Layer or By Block. However your
pre AutoCAD 2007 lights and materials they
will need converting to the new format. The
procedure is as follows:
-
Copy your AutoCAD 2006 textures to the
2007 folder - c:\Documents and
Settings\<user>\Local
Settings\Application
Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD
2006\R16.2\enu\Textures to
C:\Documents and Settings\All
Users\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD
2007\R17.0\enu\Textures
-
To
migrate pre-AutoCAD 2007 lights, use the
new AutoCAD command, CONVERTOLDLIGHTS.
-
To
migrate pre-AutoCAD 2007 materials, use
the new AutoCAD command,
CONVERTOLDMATERIALS.
Some
properties of older materials will not
migrate and may need to be reset in your
AutoCAD 2007-based products. Procedural
material settings and material mapping
settings do not migrate. Also, some material
features are no longer supported, such as
Material by ACI association and the Granite
Procedural Material.
1603 Error Installing
AutoCAD
When you try to install AutoCAD, the
installation fails and you receive a 1603
error. This issue can occur when you are
running PC connectivity software, such as PC
Anywhere or GotoMyPC. To resolve the issue
temporarily, disable the connectivity
software and run the installation again.
Layout Tabs Missing
The ability to hide or show layout tabs has
been added in AutoCAD 2007. The
hidden or visible status of the tabs is
controlled in the CUI. This setting can
be set from either the CUI dialog box or the
main drawing screen.
To modify the setting in the CUI:
-
At the command prompt, enter CUI.
-
Select the workspace you want to change.
-
In the Customize User Interface dialog box,
under Properties, set the value of the
Model/Layout tabs in the Display section as
required
To modify the setting from the status bar:
Miscellaneous Tips
Embedding DWF in Web Pages
Autodesk DWF Viewer is available as an
ActiveX control that can be embedded in
Internet Explorer, providing a smooth
installation of the free Autodesk DWF Viewer
in web pages.
The process to do this is as follows:
Create or obtain the DWF file that you want
to display.
Create an HTML file.
Copy the DWF file into the same folder as
your HTML file.
Copy and paste the following code into your
HTML file between the <body></body> tags in
the HTML.
<object id = "viewer" classid =
"clsid:A662DA7E-CCB7-4743-B71A-D817F6D575DF"
CODEBASE="http://www.autodesk.com/global/dwfviewer/installer/DwfViewerSetup.cab"
border = "1" width = "500" height = "300">
<param name = "Src" value="MyDWF.dwf">
</object>
The purpose of the CODEBASE parameter is to
automatically prompt and download a free
copy of DWF Viewer, if DWF Composer or DWF
Viewer is not on the viewing computer.
In the code, substitute the actual name of
your DWF file for MyDWF, being careful not
to delete the quotation marks or the .dwf
extension.
When your Web page is opened, the default
viewer displays the DWF file you included.
The Main Toolbar and right-click menu are
available but the menus and Navigator are
not displayed. You can display the Navigator
by clicking the Navigator button on the
toolbar, right-clicking in the viewing area
and choosing Navigator, or just pressing the
letter N on the keyboard.
Examples of Inventor produced web embedded
dwfs can be found on our website
here or on an end user site, courtesy of
Banks Racing,
here.
Imagine the possibilities this gives you
especially where your end users or customers
need access to model information. You can
produce online, interactive manuals for your
products that you can ensure are up to date
and current. Something that is not so easy
to control when you have to issue a printed
manual or manual on CD.
The uses of this technology are wide and
many, only limited by your imagination. We
would be interested to know if you are using
this already, and where you use it, or let
us know if you can see an application in
your industry where this would make a
difference.
Downloads, Service Packs & Updates
New Downloads, Service Packs & Updates released
this Month.
Major service packs and fixes in bold.
A full list of current service packs can
be found in the members area on the
website
here
.
Inventor
Inventor
Series/Professional 11
Graphics
Hardware Library File (August 3rd 2006)
Vault
Vault 5
Hotfix - DWF Publish Inconsistency with
Inventor and EDIT Command
Productstream
Productstream 5
Hotfix - DWF Publish Inconsistency with
Inventor and EDIT Command
AutoCAD
AutoCAD 2007
Service Pack 1
Tea Break
 This month we
have a link to a website to give you an idea
of what you can do with all that waste paper
that is produced in a typical Design Office.
We've probably
all had a try at origami at one time or
another but maybe not with the skill shown
on this month's tea break link
here.
Thanks to Paul
who somehow unearthed this website. A secret
origami fixation he hasn't told us about
maybe?
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