Creating a Routed System with Vanilla Autodesk Inventor – Phase Next

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.

.

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).

  Continue reading






Creating a Routed System with Vanilla Autodesk Inventor

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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.

Continue reading






How to Create a Plane on Point using Autodesk Inventor

The point can be an actual Point drawn using the Point, Center Point tool from the Draw panel in Inventor, or it can be a corner of a solid body, the centerpoint of a circle, or the end of a line.

Start by clicking the point, then any face or plane to get a plane centered on your point and parallel to that plane —or, if the point is at the end of a line, click the line second to get a plane tangent to the line. If the plane you need is parallel to one of the origin planes, use the origin plane before In the image below, I’ve sketched a rectangle that is skewed to the origin, a circle, a line, and arc, and a point. I’ll create several examples using these shapes…

 

One of a series of images used in a tutorial to describe the plane on point creation technique in Autodesk Inventor.

Clicking on the lower end of the line then the XZ Origin Plane gave me a plane at the end of the line parallel to the XZ Origin Plane…

 

One of a series of images used in a tutorial to describe the plane on point creation technique in Autodesk Inventor.

Dragging the end of the line in a counterclockwise motion, then hitting the Local Update (lightning bolt at the top of the screen) shows that the plane remains associated with the end of the line, and is also still parallel to the XZ Origin Plane…

 

One of a series of images used in a tutorial to describe the plane on point creation technique in Autodesk Inventor.

Now I’ll extrude the rectangle up a bit (and share the sketch so it remains visible), and create a plane by clicking on the centerpoint of the circle and the shaded small face on the extruded rectangle…

 

One of a series of images used in a tutorial to describe the plane on point creation technique in Autodesk Inventor.

The other planes were dragged into position at by the points for clarity, this latest one was not…but  It makes absolutely no difference where the little representation is, or whether it is even visible. The next plane was created at the left end point of the arc and the XZ Origin Plane….

 

One of a series of images used in a tutorial to describe the plane on point creation technique in Autodesk Inventor.

Again, the representation of the plane is not created at the end of the line, but in this instance, slicing thru the rectangular solid… and again, it matters not. The plane is present in the entire modelspace on that plane…not just where the indicator is.

 

 

 

One of a series of images used in a tutorial to describe the plane on point creation technique in Autodesk Inventor.

the following plane was created by line and endpoint, which is exactly what it sounds like. I clicked on the line, then on the closer end of the line to create a plane perpendicular to the line, at the end of the line…

 

One of a series of images used in a tutorial to describe the plane on point creation technique in Autodesk Inventor.

One last plane, this one is not created on a point, but I couldn’t resist. I extruded the circle up into a cylinder, then created a plane by clicking on the face of the cylinder and the shaded end of the rectangle. it created the plane that spans the cylinder and rectangle….

 

One of a series of images used in a tutorial to describe the plane on point creation technique in Autodesk Inventor.

Ooops. missed one. The corners of the rectangle are points as well. The last plane was created by clicking on the XZ plane, which highlights it as can be seen below, and the corner seen below…

 

One of a series of images used in a tutorial to describe the plane on point creation technique in Autodesk Inventor.

…to get the plane shown below, slicing through the cylinder….

 

One of a series of images used in a tutorial to describe the plane on point creation technique in Autodesk Inventor.

Here is the example file in 2010 format. Enjoy.

 






Autodesk Inventor vs………..a Crayon

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….

 

.

Continue reading






Pella ThermaStar New Construction Window BIM Objects – Good to Go!

It’s been a busy few days filled with computer crashes  & glitches, email interviews, and a huge amount of hectic modeling  behind-the-scenes on a big fat house model.

Thanks to help from Mark Flayler over at IMAGINiT, the big culprit behind all of the crashing I have been experiencing has been traced to the Autodesk Labs 3DA technology preview… which makes sense I guess. Technology previews are not finished work where most of the buggyness like this is ironed out  before it gets added to a program, or —-in some cases just gets discarded. Think of Labs as a place where the programmers can throw their digital spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. Sometimes you get smacked right in the face, but safe is for sissy’s ;)

 The Make Components Crash Fix

For those of you that have installed the Inventor 3DA technology preview and are experiencing crashing upon using the Make Components command, just go to Tools>Options>Add-Ins, select Inventor 3DA from the list, then uncheck the Load On Startup and the Loaded/Unloaded checkboxes at the bottom of the dialog as shown below…

. Continue reading






Pella ThermaStar New Construction Window BIM Objects

In this post I’ll be creating a BIM version of the Pella ThermaStar window (sold at Lowes). You can download the model at the end of the article, or at any time in the BIM section.

I need a model of the new construction version of these windows for a home model I’m working on, and as is usually the case, there is no model available –so one needs to be made.  I need the model to be a fair representation only —reasonably accurate in general looks, but very accurate in the areas where it will interact with other elements of the design. If good fit and good looks are possible without too much additional effort, I’ll likely go that route.

Right off the bat (ever had one of those weeks) I hit a little snag. The excellent little add-in created by Brian Hall of Qube-It no longer works after the Service Packs I installed the other day. I tried uninstall/reinstall, repair, etc., to no avail. Bummer. It is a nice tool that I have used quite a bit since installing. Brian describes the tool and how to get it in the video below. I’m sure it will work in other configurations…

 

Continue reading