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This Month
Tips & Tricks
Inventor Tools
Tooltip of the Month - Converting to new
set properties configuration file format Tea Break New Version of Inventor Tools Released We are pleased to announce the release of version 11.0 of the Micro Concepts Inventor Tools for Inventor 11. Version 11 is a complete rewrite of the existing Inventor Tools taking advantage of the latest .net capabilities and includes new and enhanced functionality, including new pack and go from within Inventor and a new graphical set properties tool. Version 11 has also received FULL certification from Autodesk for operation with Inventor 11. You can find more information here. See the downloads area for the link to the download folder.
I recommend you try out the Toggle Edge display tool. Simple but effective. We welcome your feedback on the new version. Let us know if you would like any of the older tools re-added or any new tools you would like to see in the future versions. New Autodesk Service Packs This month Autodesk have been very busy releasing a raft of new service packs for Inventor, Vault and AutoCAD based products. Although most of these were released at the beginning of the month our general policy is to carry out further testing ourselves after release to identify any issues that may arise from the service pack before recommending installation. Our testing has not identified any issues so we recommend installing these latest service packs. As there have been so many new service packs released below is a list of the current latest service pack for each of the products:
For the Inventor service packs there is one service pack that applies to both series and professional editions, however if you have installed the dwf extension a different service pack is required as shown in the downloads section. Autodesk Labs & Inventor Feature Recognition Tool Autodesk have created a web site to offer you preview editions of new technology and functions currently under development that they are considering offering in future product versions and as future tools and enhancements. The Autodesk Labs website http://labs.autodesk.com/. Your feedback on the items on this site will determine the future of the projects on this site. One such project that may appeal to Inventor users is a new feature recognition add in tool for Inventor 11. This tool gives you the ability to convert dumb base solids to Inventor features. If you're receiving and modifying step, sat and iges files this tool may offer some useful functionality to you. Although as this is a preview edition there is no direct support from Autodesk for this other than through this site it is well worth trying for yourselves. Our initial tests have found it to be fairly robust. The model below is a base model I tested the feature recogniser on. As you can see from the browser I was able to extract a fully featured model.
Web Training Seminars - Inventor Tools
This month we ran our first online web training session introducing the features available in the Inventor dwf extension. For those that attended we hope you found it useful and we would welcome feedback. We are planning to host these short online training sessions on a regular basis and they will be made available free of charge to customers with current support contracts. Our next session is covering the new version of Inventor Tools and will take place on Friday 13th October. Further details can be found here. Register as soon as possible to ensure you reserve one of the few remaining places. We would also like your feedback on what you would like to see covered in future sessions. Some ideas so far suggested include:
Inventor
Representations email graham.harrison@microconcepts.co.uk to let us know whether you would like to see any of the above covered or if you have your own ideas for web seminar sessions you would be interested in attending. Content Center Auto Drop Tip With service pack 2 for Inventor you now get an Autodrop option from the tools menu to toggle the default behaviour when the part is placed. With Autodrop off, instead of trying to automatically interpret the size when you place the component you can immediately access the part table to select your component. If you already know the size you require, or Autodrop is not suitable, this may speed the process of placing the component.
Whilst you can usually get the correct result from Inventor depending upon where you select with the mouse sometimes you may want to give Inventor a helping hand to achieve the correct result. Take the following example:
However because from the faces you have selected there are 2 possible solutions, you may get this:
To force Inventor to pick the correct option, you can place a “Help Point” to define which solution you require. Press the ‘>>’(more) button to expand the fillet dialogue box. In the bottom right hand corner there is a ‘Help Point’ button:
Tick this on and then select the end that you require filleted.
Selecting Part and Feature edges in IDWs In an Inventor idw you may want to highlight a particular feature or part. This may be by showing the drawing lines in a different colour, or by using a different lineweight or linetype. This can easily be done by moving the lines to a different layer but other than individually selecting the lines how do you select the edges specific to that feature or part. The answer is very simple. Simply locate the required part or feature in the browser, right click and choose the select edges option. The video file available from this link shows a simple example of this. Technical Document - Content Center Performance
A
main focus of the service pack 2 release has been to improve both Content Center
Performance and Quality. To complement this release the Autodesk Product design
team has written a white paper to help you get the best out of the Content
Center.
The Autodesk technical document on this link explains how Content Center works as well as providing tips for optimizing performance for standalone users. Inventor Tools Tooltip Of The Month Converting to New Set Properties Configuration File Format The new inventor tools has a completely new interface option for configuring the properties that appear in the set properties command. Previously this has always been managed by a file with a .ini extension by default called propertydef.ini. The .ini file is still supported but doesn't support any of the new features, such as read only properties. In the new version of the tools there is a new definition file called propertydef.xml which is stored in the same design data folder as all your other style definitions. This looks at your project settings to determine the location. Without starting from scratch how do you convert your existing definition file to the new xml format and take advantage of the graphical configuration interface to make changes and the new property options? You can do this via the Inventor Tools Options, General options tab.
Locate your existing ini file either by entering the path directly or by browsing via the ... button. Once selected choose the convert button. If the ini file converts correctly to the xml format the propertydef.xml in design data folder option will automatically be selected. You can then access the graphical editing function via the edit... button. Count number of Block Inserts in a Drawing If you would like to know how many block references are contained in a drawing you can use the Express Tools command BCOUNT to generate a count of the different block inserts in the drawing.
Changing Render Background Currently, the only colour you can use as the rendering background colour in AutoCAD 2007 is black. However there is a method where you can change the background colour for rendering
Changing Logon Password You can change your logon password and other profile information in vault very easily. In vault or Productstream explorer select user profile from the File pull down menu, or double click on the current user name at the bottom right of the status bar, to bring up the User profile dialogue. Here you can change the password, email and first and last name. Although the User Name entry can be edited in this dialogue that change will not be retained.
Installing Data Management Server on x64 computer Vault 5 and Productstream
5 are supported on Windows XP Professional
x64 Edition and Windows 2003 Server x64
Edition.
Attaching new files to existing Productstream Items In Productstream you are able to create or import an Item without having any files attached to it. At a later date you may need to attach a file to the Item and for that file to be set as the Primary attachment. You can do this as follows:
Electrical Extras CD A new eXtras CD is now available from Aceri that includes a new European catalogue database, with well over 100,000 components built into it. Revised content has been added from companies such as Telemecanique and Merlin Gerin to name a few. The European database has also been merged with the default database that’s supplied with AutoCAD Electrical meaning that you can have just one database that covers all products rather than having to search across two. Components that you may have added into your default catalogue can also be merged with the new database by utilising the utility available from the Projects dropdown > Extras. The CD also includes several other useful documents such as symbol naming conventions, inter-discipline peer to peer relationships and movies. Some of the standard libraries such as Pneumatics, Hydraulics and P&ID are also available in metric format rather than imperial on the disc. Select here to request a new extras CD. You must provide full name and address details in order for the request to be processed by Aceri. Downloads, Service Packs & Updates New Downloads, Service Packs & Updates released
this Month.
Major service packs and fixes in bold. Inventor
Inventor
Series/Professional 11
Inventor Tools
Graphics
Mechanical Desktop 2007
Hotfix - Plotting to Raster Files
Performance Improvement Vault Vault 5 Productstream Productstream 5 AutoCAD Mechanical
AutoCAD Mechanical 2007 Service Pack 1
AutoCAD Electrical
AutoCAD Electrical 2007 Service Pack 1 AutoCAD
Hotfix - Plotting to Raster Files
Performance Improvement AutoCAD LT
AutoCAD LT 2007 Service Pack 1
Sat on my desk is a Spaceball 5000 controller going to waste on account of it's user not being competent enough to use it properly. It needs to find a good home where it will be looked after properly so for this month's tea break we have a little competition for you to win this Spaceball.
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| Published by Micro Concepts Ltd Copyright 2006 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.
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