Monthly Archives: November 2009

iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor Three – 04

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iLogic Tutorial Three – Continuing the creation of  the profiles

    With the point projected, we can now begin to draw the first profile. To begin the profile, get the Three Point Arc
tool from the Draw Panel
and create the arc on the right, then create a second arc starting at the end of the first. After setting the end of the second arc, above the center around until you see the Tangent Constraint Glyph
near the intersection. Click to finish the second arc at that point.

 

Drawing the Arcs

  

Defining the Corner

 

 We now need two lines at right angles to define the corner. Starting at the projected point in the corner, draw a Line from the corner leftwards to a point beyond the end of the of the arc segment  and do the same downwards. Make sure you see the little green dot when you begin each line, and the Horizontal
or Vertical
constraint glyph before ending either line. You should wind up with something that looks like the image to the right. Both new lines should be dark blue and the Status Bar (lower right area of the graphics window) should read 9 dimensions needed.

 

 

  

Adding the dimensions

 

 We’ll add one of them now by getting the General Dimension
tool from the Constrain Panel
and selecting the point where the two arcs meet. Now select the top, horizontal, line and add the dimension .15 then right click and select ‘Done’ to end the command.

Now select the Tangent
tool from the Constrain panel and select the lower arc as shown in the image to the left. Click the vertical line right next to the arc to create the constraint between the two lines. The arc should jump over to the line as the line cannot move to the arc.

 

 

  

 

Coincedent Constraints

 

We now need to add Coincedent Constraints
between each of the free arc ends to the nearest line ends (A and B). The image to the right shows were the ends are. At this point, the status bar should show 3 dimensions needed.

Now, get the Vertical
constraint tool from the Constrain panel and add the constraint between the centerpoint of the lower arc and the junction point between the two arcs. This will make the lower arc constrained to 90�, and 2 dimensions needed to complete the sketch.

 

 

 

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Intro – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10

 





iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor Three – 03

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iLogic Tutorial Three – Creating the Profiles

iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor-Three Page Three Image 01 - Creating the Equal Constraint    Before creating the profiles, reactivate the Edge Path sketch, and create an Equal Constraint
between the two line segments. To do so, get the Equal constraint tool from the Constrain Panel
, and select the two lines on the right hand side. You will need to cycle to the next selection in both cases until your line highlights. Creating this constraint will keep the plane centered on the stile, and will keep the lines (one or the other) from flipping (fold back over the other line) when resizing things later, causing a failure.

Now we can start the first profile on the plane we just made. Right click the plane in the browser and select New Sketch from the options. Rename the sketch to Edge Profile A without exiting the sketch environment. Now right click anywhere in the graphics window and choose Slice Graphics as shown below…

 

iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor-Three Page Three Image 02 - First Edge Profile Sketch

…and zoom in on your sketch area as shown below.

 

 

 

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iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor-Three Page Three Image 03 - Zoom In

iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor-Three Page Three Image 03 - Projecting Geometry

 

Unless you feel you need it to keep your bearings, turn the visibility of the Edge Profile Plane off by right clicking it in the browser and un-checking the Visibility. We will now project the intersection of the lines onto our sketch. Get the Project Geometry
tool from the Draw panel and click the intersection of the lines (upper right corner of the sliced stile), you will see a little red dot when you have it. After clicking, you should have a projected point which looks like the dashed crosses you projected earlier. A little black dot means you clicked on the line, and need to redo it.

 

 

 

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Intro – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10

 





iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor Three – 02

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iLogic Tutorial Three – Creating the Profile Plane and Starting the Profiles

     Now for the Profile Plane. To create the profile plane, grab the Plane tool from the Work Features panel, and select the junction of the two lines on the right side as shown below…

 

iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor-Three Page Two Image 01 - Creating the Profile Plane

…then you select the edge of the stile as shown below…

 

 

 

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iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor-Three Page Two Image 02 - Select The Edge

…and the result will be a plane tangental to the edge selected, and located at the junction of the line segments. It should look like this…

 

iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor-Three Page Two Image 03 - Work Plane at End of Line

 

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Intro – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10

 





iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor Three – 01

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iLogic Tutorial Three – Creating the Path Sketch and first Profile Sketch

This iLogic Tutorial builds on the previous two tutorials. If you havent done them yet, you will need to as you need the base model to continue.

 

iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor-Three Page One Image 01 - Choose the plane

To begin, expand the origin folder in the feature browser, and right click on the XZ Plane. Choose New Sketch from the context menu to create a new sketch on the face of the part. Rename the sketch Edge Path. Now from the Draw Panel
, select the Project Geometry tool and select all four corners. Once all four of the corners are projected, you will have four dashed crosses at the corners, and should have no lines. If you do have lines from accidently projecting edges, delete them.

 

iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor-Three Page One Image 02 - Projecting geometry

Grab the Line
tool from the Draw Panel
and start a line at the projected point at the close corner and start moving towards the upper right corner. At a point somewhere less than half, making sure the Vertical
constraint glyph is present, click to set the first segment, then continue on with a new segment to the point at the upper right hand corner.

 

iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor-Three Page One Image 03 - Inventor Coincident Constraint Glyph

When you see the green ball and the Coincident Constraint Glyph
as shown in the image above, click to set the second segment. Continue with another segment to the upper left corner.

 

 

 

iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor-Three Page One Image 04 - coincedent glyph

 Look for the coincedent glyph again and set the second segment. Continue on down to the lower left corner, then back over to the lower right hand corner where you started, making sure you can see the little green ball and the Coincident Constraint Glyph
at each corner.

 

iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor-Three Page One Image 05 - The completed Inventor sketch

The final sketch is a continuous path around the model, with the right hand segment split into two parts. Finish the sketch by right clicking anywhere in the graphics or browser windows and select Finish Sketch. Save the model.

 

 

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Intro – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10

 





iLogic Tutorial for the iDoor Three – Intro

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iLogic Tutorial Three – Introduction – Rules for Edge Profiles

The First iLogic Tutorial in this series dealt with the multi body modeling technique needed to create the base part: the door.

The Second Tutorial added the multiple hinge bore configurations required by most manufacturers, then added iLogic rules to generate the configurations automatically based on door height. Also added was a rule to limit the min/max size of the door, as well as one to automatically downsize any rail and/or stile widths that would be too large thedoor is set to a smaller size.

This iLogic tutorial builds on the first two tutorials in this series by adding a rule that allows the choice of 5 edge profiles or none –which is as much or more than a small to mid size cabinet shop normally would offer.

It is quite easy to remove a profile, change it,  or add a new one at a later date –which is critical as the abilities of the iDoor (or i-whatever it is you make) should always match your production capabilities exactly.

 

 

 

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iLogic Tutorial part 2

This tutorial will involve creating a single path and profile plane, and five profile sketches. These sketches, in turn, will each use that single path in a cut Sweep operation around the part, with all four rails and stiles selected as participants…. which shows of one of the sweet capabilities you get with multi-solid parts (Inventor 2010 +).

Operations like this in an assembly environment would be a mini nightmare. It would involve 4 separate cut operations per profile, many, many, instances of projected geometry  —along with the crosspart dependencies from same — and would be a general pain in the butt to create. 

 With this technique, there is one shared path for all of the profile cuts, a shared workplane that the profiles will be sketched upon, and the cut operations are performed on all parts at once —a very clean workflow compared to old-school assembly modeling.

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Intro – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10

 





Autodesk Inventor iLogic

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    The blurb below from Autodesk describes iLogic fairly well:

Exclusively available for Autodesk Inventor Subscription customers, the Inventor iLogic Extension 2009 enhances the parametric design capabilities of Inventor 2009 software by providing a powerful and elegant solution for rules‐based design. With its easy‐to‐use rules authoring capabilities and an intuitive user interface seamlessly integrated with Inventor, Inventor iLogic shatters barriers to automating tedious design tasks and adds higher levels of design intelligence to your digital prototypes.

Inventor iLogic enables Inventor users to easily create “smart” parts and assemblies that define multiple product configurations and automatically update in real‐time based on logical relationships between design parameters such as mass, volume, dimensional values, material types, feature and component activation or suppression, patterns, and many more.

For example, Inventor iLogic lets you easily create a design rule that lengthens a cross‐beam, adds anadditional support strut, and changes the material of the entire structure from aluminum to steel ifthe mass of the load it supports exceeds 200 kg. This simple example barely scratches the surface of Inventor iLogic’s exciting capabilities.

Without Inventor iLogic, writing such design rules in raw programming language would require hundreds or thousands of lines of code. This is a time‐consuming and error‐prone process for expert programmers, and next to impossible for anyone with less than expert programming skills. Inventor iLogic dramatically simplifies rules‐based design with easy to use, clickable tools that any Inventor user working at the individual and engineering workgroup level can use – even those with little or no programming experience.

Autodesk recently acquired the original iLogic technology from Autodesk Authorized Developer Logimetrix, Inc., who previously offered iLogic for up to $4,300 USD per license as an Autodesk Inventor 2009 Certified add‐in. Autodesk is pleased to address this common Inventor customer request and add additional value to your investment in Autodesk Subscription.

 

 

 

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 Because iLogic is such a new addition to Inventor, there is very little as far as resources available. I will be adding iLogic tutorials, tips & tricks hers as they become available, but I haven’t found any books or other learning resources outside of those contained in Inventor itself and a few tutorials on the web such as my iDoor Tutorial, the second iDoor with iLogic Tutorial, and the Derived Block Library Tutorial, and the three tutorial set that came with Inventor 2009 and 2010.

iLogic rules are a slightly modified version of Visual Basic. Visual  Basic 2008 Express Edition can be downloaded for free from Microsoft by using the link below. There is tons of information out there on Visual Basic, so it would make sense to get started there, but having said that, you can pick it up.
 

Visual Basic Express

Visual Basic knowledge is also ‘must have’ (at this point) if you want to use the API (Application Programming Interface) to develop your own interfaces for your Inventor iLogic mini programs. There are configurators that perform a similar function available, and do so very well, but the cost is pretty steep at this point.