There was a bit of confusion regarding solid creation in Chapter 5 of this Inventor tutorial for a Shaker Table , so I think I’ll give a little wrap-up post regarding solid bodies before moving on to iLogic.
As of version 2010(?) Autodesk Inventor has included the ability to create multiple solid bodies within single parts. It is much like a small assembly –with the huge exception of the ability to create cross-part dependencies that are both stable and responsive. I don’t want to go too far down that road at the moment, but, in a nutshell all of the features in our model are grouped into 13 Solid Bodies, each of which containing one or more features. For example, the Leg A Solid Body contains these four features:
- Leg A Ext
- Leg A Taper Cut
- Mortise A
- Mortise B
and Apron A includes these three features:
- Tenon A
- Apron A Ext
- Apron A Mirror
Each feature within a given solid would be a natural part of that solid if the solid were to be changed into a part (and it will be eventually). An overview of solid body creation goes like this:
As soon as you create a solid within your part you have a solid body, but until you tell Inventor you have another solid body, Inventor will keep adding any new features you create to that first solid. To create additional solids, you need to use the New solid tool shown to the right…
As soon as there is more than one solid residing within a part, the Solid Bodies folder is automatically created in Inventors Feature Browser. Another thing that happens is that the Solids selector becomes active. It is the arrow button listed as “Solids” to the left of the Extrude dialog. This button is only used if Inventor tries to add a feature you are creating to the wrong solid, or if you want a cut feature that needs to affect more than one solid.
It will NOT create a new solid –which is where most people go astray. There are examples of how to use this command in the iDoor tutorials, you may want to check that out, but for this tutorial, it shouldn’t be needed at all.
We will eventually be creating an assembly containing 13 parts based on these 13 solid bodies, but I’m not going to put the cart before the horse –just suffice it to say that you need to have separate solid bodies and not one big table-shaped part.
At this point in this excellent Inventor tutorial, your feature browser should look like the one to the right (click to get the full sized version). If you spot something I left out, please use the comment box to let me know and I’ll go fix it. If you missed something, now is your chance to catch up.
The next post (hopefully later today) will have some iLogic code. Stay tuned…
Subsribe to Post Notifications
Loading ...
Thanks very much for this post, which along with some experimenting, has definitely cleared things up. I did not know for example that I could cut through multiple solids.
Mark
Hi Mark, Once you have multi-solid layout parts down-pat, you will never go back. It is a very stable and pretty damn versatile way to design. It’s too bad Autodesk seems to have abandoned work on their functionality. I don’t think anything new has been added since their inception. Oh well. Glad you enjoyed the post!
Thanks for nice modeling technique you share. Maybe I am asking to soon but what about part list of table: it is 5 different components in total instead of 13 multi body components. How do you solve that? and another thing is including standard components (bolts, washers, screws…)? Thanks once more!
Hello gediminas,
Thanks for stopping by! —Yes, I will be creating an automated parts list that uses iLogic, and so-far there will be thirteen parts…but in the end, there will be much more as I will be adding hardware, and possibly splitting the top into its component parts for a glue-up list.
The first thing I will be doing will likely be min/max code to keep the model from both blowing up, and from becoming un-manufacturable. I hope to have something out today, but I am catching up with email from the holidays and trying to install a buggy message board.
Check back later today…
I am interested in seeing the 'automated parts list that uses iLogic'. Have you been able to add this part to the tutorial? Many Thanks!
Hi Ken,
I'm pretty sure this was covered towards the end of this Blogtorial to connect with TigerStop. Do a search on TigerStop and you should find it.
Mark
Thanks, With this #7 tutor that help me to visualize how the parts combine together.
Big help.
Hi Luong,
You are very welcome. Once you ‘get’ how solid bodies work, they are a breeze to work with. They are far more robust to work with, and are absolutely necessary for the creation automated design modules, or ‘smart parts’. Stay tuned for the iLogic portion of the tutorial –it’s pretty interesting…
http://opendesignproject.org/2011/12/30/creating-…
Mark