Monthly Archives: March 2010

Inventor Tutorial – Information Errors – Intro

Posted on by

Inventor Tutorial Information Errors Page One Image 01 - Screenshot of the Autodesk "information" error

Inventor Tutorial  for Information Errors  – Introduction

I ran into a bunch of “Information” errors while working on the iCabinet, and thought it was worth mentioning as this can be a perplexing error, especially to a newbie.

The little Inventor Tutorial Information Errors Page One Image 02 - Inventor Information Error Icon icon is supposed to denote that there is Information regarding a problem in the feature (or constraint if its in an assembly). If you are working in an .ipt when the error shows up, and you somehow find the error’s description in Inventor Help under Errors > Assembly Constraints (why would you look there when working in a part?) it states:

Inventor Tutorial Information Errors Page One Image 03 - This is the dreaded Autodesk Inventor 'Information' Error IconInformation about the attempted constraint is available. If multiple problems are found, you can expand and collapse the message hierarchy while you evaluate the needed actions.

 

Just below the info above, (If you continue reading) you will find:

 

Continue reading →





Autodesk Inventor 2011′s Enhanced Visualization – No Ghost In The Machine.

Posted on by

Well that was quick. I posted what I thought were images from the Release To Manufacturing version of Inventor 2011, but apparently not so. My bad. So, no more Inventor 2011 posts, and the ones posted were taken down —which is too bad, but it is what it is.

 

 

Is your company ready to move into the new century and develop a Product Configurator? If not, will your competition blow you out of the water when they do? Click to find out how Applied Design Intelligence can help.

 

 

I’ll get back to figuring out the code for the little add-in for the output automation as discussed in the Inventor iLogic for Cabinetmaking – Demoting The Parts article. It looks like I have it at least partially figured out, and it doesn’t look too hard (so-far). I’ve gotten it to rename files within Inventor using Visual Basic code, but will need to play around with it for awhile.

I’ll post the files and the add-in when I have it figured out. If you happen to be a Visual Basic guru, I’d love to hear from you!

 





Inventor iLogic for Cabinetmaking – Demoting The Parts

Posted on by

This image shows the cabinet subassemblies after renames and demotions

 

The 56 parts that make up the Cabinet 01 assembly were further broken down into the sub assemblies shown in the image to the right. This is the part I think can be automated so I don’t want to dwell on the minutiae of part demotion here, but will instead gloss-over the procedure. Its not rocket science.

All that needs to be done is to open the assembly, then select a logical group of parts in the workspace, such as the face frame, then right click and choose Component > Demote, just like it is shown in the last post. Once the assembly is created, just right click and ground it, then turn off its visibility so that you have easy access to what is left to demote. Any parts that will not be part of an assembly can just have their visibility shut off as soon as you encounter them.

You just keep doing this routine until the workspace is empty, then restore the visibility of all, rearrange the order if you like, and you’re done. Easy peasy.

I did not time the procedure, but guess it took about 15 minutes or-so. This dosent sound like a big deal until you add up all of the cabinets. There were 10 in this test, but the test was a very small kitchen, and did not include uppers. The average would be closer to 15 cabinets, which would take 3 hours and 45 minutes to complete, or about a half day.

 

 

Continue reading →





Inventor iLogic for Cabinetmaking – Placing and Configuring the Cabinets

Posted on by

The Autodesk Inventor iLogic KitchenThe iCabinet test model is far along enough along to do a pretty good test of cabinetry placement and component creation. The model is a single Autodesk Inventor .ipt (part file) that is driven by 21 iLogic Rules. It has 100 solid bodies, but the amount of actual parts outputted upon component creation will depend on how each individual cabinet is configured. The final cabinets will likely average 70 parts or so each.

The test kitchen layout is a very simple corridor or galley style kitchen. I chose this style because I do not have a corner cabinet as of yet, and this is all that is really needed for the test at any rate.

This layout calls for 10 base cabinets, all of which will be created from the single iCabinet iLogic driven part. This particular design has leveler legs on the front of the cabinets and a ledger or cleat at the back on the wall as can be seen in the image to the right.

In the image below, you can see that the folder for this test contains only three items at this point…

 

This image shows the folder for the Autodesk iLogic test.

Continue reading →





Inventor iLogic for Cabinetmaking – The End Is Near

Posted on by

iLogic Rules Based Model The forum had a major malfunction requiring immediate attention….which set me back a bit, and lost a months worth of posts. I’ll write about that shortly, but for now, back to the iCabinet.

Since the last post, I modeled the pullouts, added the drawer front mounting bores and hardware, the hinge bores and hardware, and optimized the iLogic Rules to run smoother. The coding takes the most time as it needs to be run over and over and tweaked along the way. A great many things happen to the cabinet when it transitions to and from the wider, sink unit state.

But, at any rate, the end is near. Some of the things on my punch list from the last post will be iLogic-code-only such as the materials and hardware. I’m thinking that kind of stuff would need to be handled globally –after the Make Components stage.

The part, as it sits this AM, has 90 solid bodies and several zillion items in the feature browser. It is registering about 3 megs, and hopefully will remain so as I would like it to be email-able.

Here are a few thoughts, then I am back at it…

Continue reading →





Inventor iLogic for Cabinetmaking – Progress Slower Than Expected

Posted on by

iXCabinet Progress

 

The modeling on the new version of the iCabinet is going a little bit slower than expected, but is nearly complete. I need to model the two pullouts (and a ton of other stuff), and she should be ready to rock.

As expected, the modeling of wood products from end-grain sketches, as I have done throughout this version, takes more than twice the time, and increases the complexity dramatically.

The increased complexity, in turn, causes a performance hit…. but the biggest hit to performance is likely to be in how the iLogic code is written. I am still quite new to iLogic, and have no doubt that I have too much bloat in the code :) now for some stats…. Continue reading →