This is a new one to me. I can no longer insert images in Autodesk Inventor! Trying to save a part with an inserted image first caused first a ‘Failure’, immediately followed by a ‘Problem’, which then lead to a crash.

 The image below shows pretty well how things started. I was working on the tankless water heater BIM part seen in the image, and was performing the very last step – adding the logo image.  Which went well as it always does …………………..until I hit save.

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For those of you who have created your own background image for Inventor and need a color scheme to match –or if you just want to fine tune things to fit your style, there is a way to do so.

The stock color schemes that ship with Inventor are, in my opinion, just fine for most people for the majority of uses. But, with a white background such as the one used for the ‘Presentation’ color scheme,  there is a problem with a couple items that use yellow as their color such as the work axes  shown below (click)…

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If you didn’t sleep through the previous post, you were promised some stuff at the very end. This is that stuff. It took longer than it should have as I had to get some drawings to the plumber. Without further ado…

The next part needed in this assembly is another 4” ‘Long Sweep’ elbow that goes somewhere below the circle that represents the closet flange penetration. To place this part, I needed to align the axis of one of its legs to an axis running through the center of the circle parallel to the Z Origin Axis. That axis does not exist, so I needed to create it.

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A quick note about structure before I continue. All of the layout sketches and work features being created are located within the Plumbing Layout.ipt part file which is located within the Plumbing_08-25-10.iam. All of the plumbing parts are located in the same assembly as can be seen in the image of the Browser Bar to the above (click).

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For this series of articles, the Routed System of choice will be your average everyday home plumbing. The DWV (drain, waste, and vent) system to be exact.  

The DWV layout I am using as an example is for is for a little eco cottage design that has all of the mechanicals running through chases and partition walls to keep the thermal envelope as intact as possible — but the technique will work on any design equally well. Also of note is that the design has a FPSF (frost Protected Shallow Foundation) slab……which means there is only one chance to get things right.

The Penetrations

The penetration drawing is a plan view sketch that shows where the various pipes pass through the structure at whatever level is represented. It is created  as the first sketch in a part file located in the overall plumbing assembly. This is a hold-over from ship design days, but it works on houses as well.  

For this particular house, you can see that the stack and vents run up a 2” x 6” partition wall. There is a wet vent at the other end of the wall as well, but is not shown. All of these penetrations run down the center of the wall, and can be drawn on the same plane, which is where I started.

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The crayon in question is Crayon Physics Deluxe, —– a cool little program written back in 07 by Petri Purho, that uses artificial physics and virtual crayons to complete levels of an interesting  little game.

I downloaded the original version of the game (pre deluxe) for my four year old daughter back-in-the-day thinking it would be a fun learning tool….but it didn’t take.  I guess four year olds are less interested in physics than I thought……..even if it did involve crayons. Whodathunk?

Maybe it had something to do with the old-school Pink Floydesque soundtrack. One can never be sure….

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