Tag Archives: 3D Modeling

These posts are all related to 3D parametric modeling, most of which are iLogic, Rules-Based modeling

Inventor Material and Colors Creation Tutorial

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In this very basic tutorial we will be creating several new Inventor colors and a new Inventor material based on stock items found in Inventor’s extensive material library. There is far more that can be done via the Styles Editor, but we will just stick to doing what is necessary to make wood look realistic in Inventor. The only problem I foresee is that some of you may not have the correct permissions to proceed, but here we go regardless…

I will be using the Shaker Table from the Designing a Shaker Table with Autodesk Inventor tutorial as an example, so you may want to start with that if you haven’t already done so.

As I stated before, you need to check your permissions to make sure you have Read-Write capabilities. If not, you would be able to create the material and color, but they would be stored in the document that is open when they are created, and you will not be able to apply them to future parts. To get started, with nothing open in Inventor, click on the Projects icon on the Launch panel of the Get Started tab to bring up the Projects editor…

 

Inventor material tutorial image-01 - Change Autodesk Inventor's permissions to read write

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Inventor Tutorial for Designing a Shaker Table – 6 – Patterning the Solids

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Now for some fun stuff, the patterning of the solids that were created in the previous Inventor Tutorial. All of the patterning will involve mirroring, and all of the mirrors will use the models origin planes as their center –which makes for a very robust model…

..but before we get to the patterning, I placed the one “out of the box” so-to-speak detail to the piece. The chamfer on the underside of the top. I went with a ½” chamfer for now, but will likely tweak things a bit later. Most things are not written in stone in parametric modeling (if things are done correctly). The Chamfer is pretty self-explanatory. Click on the Chamfer tool, then either start selecting edges then size, or vice versa…

 

An Inventor tutorial showing how to cut the chamfer on the table top

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Inventor Tutorial for Designing a Shaker Table – 5 – Creating Solids

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With the final drawing for the shaker table completed in the previous installment of this Inventor Tutorial, its finally time to start extruding some features. To prepare for extruding, turn on the visibility of all sketches except the first one, the Top Sketch.

 

You should now have a screen that looks something like this…

 

Preparing for extruding in this Inventor tutorial.

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Inventor Tutorial for Designing a Shaker Table – 4 – The Final Sketching

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The final sketching in this Inventor TutorialIn the last installment of this Inventor Tutorial, we finished up with Tenon Profile Sketch –which will wrap up the sketches on the Sub Top Work Plane, but before we create new planes to draw the legs on, it’s time to create the two planes that describe the top and bottom of the mortise and tenon joint.

We could leave things as they are and create tenons without top and bottom shoulders, but that would create a crappy joint. The mortise in the leg would come through the top of the leg and weaken the table dramatically. This is why the driven dimension Tenon_Shoulder was created in our last installment. We will now use that parameter to create an offset plane that will be used as the starting plane for both the additive and subtractive extrusions that make up the mortise and tenon.

To begin, make the Sub Top Work Plane visible and rotate your model similar to what you see in the image below. Grab the Plane tool, click the plane in the modeling window, and drag downwards just like you did to create the Sub Top Work Plane. Add the Tenon_Shoulder parameter, and make sure you add the little minus sign again as we want the plane in the Z- direction…

 

In this part of the Inventor Tutorial, we will create the mortise and tenon shoulder planes

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Inventor Tutorial for Designing a Shaker Table – 3 – Sketching More Stuff

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An Inventor Tutorial for sketchingWe left off in this Inventor Tutorial yesterday with the corner bracket drawn, but not constrained to the projected geometry. We’ll start today by projecting the other two lines that make up the square that represents the top of the leg, then window select all of the projected lines and click on the Construction icon on the Format Panel.

Making these projected lines construction lines will make sure they are not interpreted by the program as closed loops and thereby avoiding their auto selection when performing modeling operations that require same (such as extruding).

With that done, create a dimension between the inner point of the table’s leg and the back face of the bracket. Use the Bracket_Offset parameter here. To fully constrain the sketch (and get the bracket where it needs to go), use the Collinear Constraint tool to constrain each of the angled end lines of the bracket sketch to the closest line that represents an apron. The sketch should now look like this…

 

An Inventor Tutorial showing how to constrain sketch geometry
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Inventor Tutorial for Designing a Shaker Table – 2 – Sketching Stuff

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In the first installment of this Inventor Tutorial for designing a Shaker Table , we left off adding parameters that will be used in the Sub Top Sketch to create the table’s leg and two apron sections. The apron sections will be mirrored into full parts later, then all three will be mirrored to create 4 apron parts and 4 legs.

This sketch is very basic and should take very little time to complete. We are starting with only the Sub Top Sketch visible, the View Cube set to TOP, and zoomed in on the lower left corner of the projected rectangle. Activate the sketch by double clicking on it in the Feature Browser, then create a square in the general location where the leg will go (image below). Add the Leg_Width parameter to both sides of the square, and use the Leg_Inset parameter to position the square equidistant from the lines representing the corner of the table top…

 

Sketching in an Inventor Tutorial

Now, zoom out a bit and draw two rectangles in the rough location and size of the apron sections. Note that the apron sections will be drawn at about half length…

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