Tag Archives: iDoor

Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor – 2

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Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor – 02 – Constraining the Sketch and adding parameters.

 

Draw a rectangle in Autodesk Inventor

 

Tip; if you have a different color scheme than mine (you almost defiantly do) and want a white background so things look the same, download this background file and use the short Background Image tutorial to apply it.

 

Once you have the rectangle drawn, you will need to center it relative to the origin point. The easiest way to do this is by using Horizontal
and Vertical
constraints located near the center of the ribbon on the Constrain panel as shown below.

 

Select the Vertical Constraint

Select the Vertical Constraint
from the Constrain Panel
of the ribbon and hover your cursor over the Center Point
until it turns red, then click. Then move to the center area of the topmost horizontal line in the rectangle until you get a little green ball that indicates you have found the center, and click there as well to complete the vertical constraint. Depending on how far off from being centered your rectangle was, it may jump sideways quite a bit to center itself.

 

 

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Add a vertical constraint to upper line

When complete there will be a little dot on the line at the center of the line
showing that there is a coincident constraint to the line. Now add a Horizontal Constraint
from the Center Point to the right vertical member of the rectangle to constrain it as well. The rectangle will now remain centered on the part’s origin, which is good modeling practice in general, but is needed later in the tutorial.

 

 

Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor – 01

 

Intro – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12 – 13 – 14 – 15

16 – 17 – 18 – 19 – 20 – 21 – 22 – 23 – 24 – 25 – 26 – 27 – 28 – 29

 





Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor – 1

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Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor – 01 – Starting the Sketch and adding parameters

The following tutorial is for Inventor 2010 and later versions of Autodesk Inventor. The tutorial will lead you thru the steps needed to create a skeletally controlled, multi-solid door; use the Create iPart
and Component Authoring
commands to
create and upload the part to Content Center
, then insert that single part into an entire kitchen full of door opening sizes. From there, you will learn to Make Components
from all of the inserted, multi-body parts.

If you are very new to Inventor, the tutorials that ship with inventor are pretty good, and you should take advantage of them, but anyone that is fairly good with the ribbon interface and is not incredibly stupid can master this tutorial with a bit of work.

Starting the Sketch and Adding Parameters

The skeletal model is the first, and most important step in the creation of any model in my opinion; but in this case, the skeleton is not derived
into anything as it generally is in old-school skeletal modeling. In this, and many of the workflows you will see on this website, the skeletal part is developed further using the multi-solid part functionality that is now included (finally) in Autodesk Inventor 2010.

With the new multi-solid functionality, you can go far beyond the old skeletal modeling schema by developing skeletal layouts that are various combinations of solid bodies and sketches, which can be derived into other skeletal layout parts to create a skeletal system contained in a master skeleton file. This schema is how I created the model for my own home, and I will put up a page on how the schema works if there is any interest.

Back to the iDoor. The first thing to do is create a new part, and create a new Sketch
on the XZ Plane
. If your part started with a sketch on the XY Plane
, click the green Finish Sketch
icon up on the right side of the sketch ribbon to get out of sketch mode, then right click on Sketch1 in the browser and choose ‘Delete’ from the context menu. Now click on Create 2D Sketch
 in the browser and click on the XZ Plane
in the browser’s Origin folder ( the reason for doing this is so the part comes in in the correct orientation when placing from Content Center
) . Click the Finish Sketch
 to exit out of the sketch environment again and save the file as iDoor.ipt

Rename the new sketch ‘Layout’, and open the Parameters
 editing window. Create the following parameters (note; due to a flaw in Inventor, you cannot copy and paste in the parameter editor Update — it has been brought to my attention that you can copy & paste in the parameter editor, but you must use the keyboard shortcuts, there is no context menu as you would expect. Thanks Peter);

 

User Parameters Unit Equation Export?
       
Opening_Width in 12 in No
Opening_Height in 24 in No
Left_Stile_Width in 2 in No
Right_Stile_Width in 2 in No
Top_Rail_Width in 2 in No
Bottom_Rail_Width in 2.5 in No

 

The comment field should generally always be filled out, even if you are working in a single user environment. I say that because the model I am re-creating to produce this tutorial was made by myself nearly a year ago, and its a real pain in the ass trying to figure out what parameters do what by the time the model is done and there are 59 (or many hundreds) of them to sort through.

Your parameters editor dialog should now look like this…

 

Inventor Tutorial iDoor Page One Image 01

 

 

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Now that the starting parameters are completed, its time to start adding some geometry. Double click on the ‘Layout’ sketch in the browser to activate it. Click the Two Point Rectangle
on the Draw Panel
of the ribbon (the fourth icon in from the left in Inventor 2010), and draw a box around the center point as shown in the next image.

Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor Navigation

Intro – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12 – 13 – 14 – 15

16 – 17 – 18 – 19 – 20 – 21 – 22 – 23 – 24 – 25 – 26 – 27 – 28 – 29

 





Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor – Introduction

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This Inventor tutorial requires Autodesk Inventor 2010 or later as it is based on a multi solid part. It is geared towards the beginner that wants to get up to speed quickly, or a more experienced user who may be looking to learn new techniques.

The iDoor tutorial will serve as the anchor tutorial for several more Inventor tutorials that will each add functionality to the base design, and possibly a few prequel tutorials to explain in more detail any parts of the tutorial that are harder to grasp.

As is, a door like this can be published to Content Center, and numerous copies can be placed into an assembly (as many as you wish). All of the placed doors are then easily sized to the openings present, and at the proper time, all of the correctly sized parts can be created. A massively easier solution than in previous versions of Inventor. There can be as many parts per door as the design calls for, and even the most complex design can be accommodated via the robust skeletal framework.

Some of the features of the tutorial;

  • If you hover your cursor over Green Text
    you will get a little pop-up showing what a command or panel looks like. The Opera browser does not do this well, as the pop-ups appear far too high above the link.
  • Introduces skeletal modeling techniques.
  • Most images are linked to a full sized representation, just click the image to enlarge.
  • Orange Text are back links to relevant instruction. The link will open in a new window so you don’t loose your place in a long tutorial such as this. These will be added on an on-going basis.
  • The combo linkbox at the bottom of each page will take you to any page in the tutorial, and also has a forward and back arrow for in-line navigation (see bottom of this page).
  • A video, and animated image.
  • DWF version of the completed door for download.

If you don’t own a copy of Inventor 2010, you can download a free 30 day trial. There is also a LT version of Inventor, but I’m not sure if it has the functionality to complete this tutorial. I know for sure that it cannot perform the next phase of the tutorial –producing the door assemblies.

Feel free to contact me via the email link at the bottom of every page if you have questions or to report typos, unclear instruction, or ideas for improvement.

 

 

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Page 1 of the Inventor tutorial

PS – This door took about 1/2 hour to design as-is, and would take several more days to configure into a model that could represent any door in a custom cabinet shop. The same thing can be done for the cabinets as well, and I will post a tutorial for that as well. The image below shows three iDoors inserted into an assembly with the Place
tool. They were then converted to assemblies containing correctly sized parts. Drawings could be automated from here, or output generated for CNC equipment. More on the last page of this Inventor tutorial…

Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor Navigation

Intro – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12 – 13 – 14 – 15

16 – 17 – 18 – 19 – 20 – 21 – 22 – 23 – 24 – 25 – 26 – 27 – 28 – 29

 





Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor – 29

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Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor – 29 – Conclusion – Testing The Model

Inventor Tutorial iDoor Page Twenty Nine Image 01- The Completed iDoor

 

Now you may want to rotate the model into an upright position (watch the view cube), and change he Home View to this orientation.

There are numerous other possibilities for this door that will be explored in coming tutorials, but for now, we will call it done. except for the testing.

In real life, a door such as this would rarely have any of the parameters change beyond the Opening_Width and Opening_Height, but in custom cabinet shops, there are always exceptions; especially when Islands and Bars are part of the overall design.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there are no Min/Max controls on Inventor parts unless you program the part with iLogic— which will be included in another tutorial.

What this means is that if you were to set the width or height parameters smaller than the sum of the parts in-between, bad things will happen. The same goes for making the rail or stile sum larger than can be accommodated without making the panel profiles disappear. Another case of bad things happening…

 

 

Inventor Tutorial iDoor Page Twenty Nine Image 02 - Errors occurred during update

…but that’s what the undo button is for.

 

 

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If this tutorial has helped you at all, please consider linking from your home page, blog, or in discussion groups to spread the word. Thanks!
 

Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor Navigation

Intro – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12 – 13 – 14 – 15

16 – 17 – 18 – 19 – 20 – 21 – 22 – 23 – 24 – 25 – 26 – 27 – 28 – 29

 





Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor – 28

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Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor – 28 – Panel Creation Continued

 To finish up the panel, it needs to be mirrored twice. To set up for this, rotate the model so that it is the opposite of the home isometric position, similar to that shown below.

 

Inventor Tutorial iDoor Page Twenty Eight Image 01 - The Panel Quarter

Now select the Mirror
tool from the Pattern Panel
. The Features command will be active, and even though it appears as though the panel is already selected, it is not. The dashed magenta lines signify that we will be adding the mirrored geometry to what is already there. You need to click on the panel to satisfy the requirement. After clicking on the panel, the Mirror Plane button will become active, and you will need to click on the longer face (yellow below). This will give you what you see below, click OK to finalize the command.

 

Inventor Tutorial iDoor Page Twenty Eight Image 02 - Select The Panel

You will wind up with a part that looks like the one below….

 

Inventor Tutorial iDoor Page Twenty Eight Image 03 - Mirrored Part

Which is wrong. The profile cut wasn’t mirrored over. To remedy this, double click on the Mirror1 feature you just created, and on the left side of the dialog box, choose the lower one which is Mirror Solid. Click OK, and all is well…

 

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Inventor Tutorial iDoor Page Twenty Eight Image 04 - Fixed Panel

Add Panel to the features name to get PanelMirror1, then do the same thing (without going back to change things of course), this time mirroring towards yourself. You should just need to select the Mirror a Solid button on the left, and select the face that is facing you as the mirror plane (no need to click the Mirror Plane button, you will deselect it if you do). Click OK, and if everything looks allright, click on the Home button to spin back around to the home position. Rename the feature PanelMirror2 and save.

 

Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor Navigation

Intro – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12 – 13 – 14 – 15

16 – 17 – 18 – 19 – 20 – 21 – 22 – 23 – 24 – 25 – 26 – 27 – 28 – 29

 





Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor – 25

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Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor – 25 – Creating the Solid Bodies – The Rails

As soon as you select the point the preview will update to look like the image below. next you need to change the extrude type to Cut by clicking on the button shown…

 

Inventor Tutorial iDoor Page Twenty Five Image 01 - Select the Point

The preview will change from green to red. now select the Solids button, and click on both rails…

 

Inventor Tutorial iDoor Page Twenty Five Image 02 - Change To Cut Operation

When selected, the rails will be outlined in a grotesque magenta dashed line. Click OK to cut.

 

 

Inventor Tutorial iDoor Page Twenty Five Image 03 - Select The Solids To Cut

The rails are done, and should look like those below…

 

Inventor Tutorial iDoor Page Twenty Five Image 04 - The Completed Rails

 

Inventor Tutorial for the iDoor Navigation

Intro – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12 – 13 – 14 – 15

16 – 17 – 18 – 19 – 20 – 21 – 22 – 23 – 24 – 25 – 26 – 27 – 28 – 29