Tag Archives: Woodworking

Woodworking at the Open Design Project demonstrates furniture design for the new millenium

iLogic Tutorial for Creating a Woodworking Cutlist

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We’ll start this iLogic tutorial by informing you that there is no built-in cutlist functionality in Autodesk Inventor –parts lists, sure, but a parts list in most cases is about as useful as teats on a bull. I will likely go back later and split the top and create a glue-up schedule as well, but for now, an automated cutlist.

I cobbled together the technique used in this iLogic tutorial back when iLogic was a subscription bonus add-in a few years back. It uses Custom iProperties  to hold WIDTH, LENGTH, and THICKNESS values on a per-part basis. These values are filled in automatically using and iLogic rule that reads parameters in the parts, and are then used at the drawing level in fields of the same name.

This tutorial builds upon the twenty three previous tutorials in the Shaker Table series. On with the Cutlist Tutorial. Begin by opening up the Designing a Shaker Table with Autodesk Inventor.iam (the assembly). From there open the layout part which should be at the top of the list in the Browser Bar. We need to know all of the parameters that describe the width, length, and thickness of the Leg A solid body so that we can bring them into the assembly. Looking at the Parameter Editor, we can see one of them, Leg_Width…

 

iLogic Tutorial for Creating a Woodworking Cutlist image 01 - Autodesk Inventor Tutorial

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Inventor Tutorial for Making Components From a Multi-Solid Body Part

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Inventor Tutorial for creating parts from solid bodiesIn this Inventor Tutorial we will create multiple parts and an assembly from a single multi-solid body layout part. Then will go back to the original part and modify it to demonstrate the continued linkage between the layout part and it’s children.

This Inventor Tutorial use the Shaker Table as the example –the version being where we left off after the post: iLogic Code for Creating Min/Max Design Limits in Autodesk Inventor – 3. Having said that, any part with multiple solid bodies will work for this demonstration –it’s just easier to be on the same page.

Creating components from your layout parts is incredibly simple. Start by switching to the Manage Tab. On the Layout Panel, click on Make Components. The Make Components: Selection dialog will pop up, where we will in our case select all of the solid bodies in the Solid Bodies folder…

 

 Inventor Tutorial for Making Components – Image 03 - Selecting solid bodies in

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iLogic Code for Creating Min/Max Design Limits in Autodesk Inventor – 2

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iLogic Code Writing Tutorial Two - Image-01I left off in the last iLogic code post with the code that limits the Shaker Table’s apron  to a minimum of two inches. Today’s post will cover the apron’s maximum width code as well as the min/max for the thickness.

But first, I promised to show how to make the model semi-transparent. It is not at all necessary to do so, but I like to use the technique when adding and testing iLogic code so that I can get an x-ray view as to what is going on in my model. I have posted the How-To under the title iLogic Code Writing and Testing in a Semi-Transparent Model

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iLogic Tutorial for Creating Min/Max Design Limits in Autodesk Inventor

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iLogic Tutorial Image-01 - Autodesk Inventor's iLogic BrowserWe will be using the Shaker Table created in an earlier iLogic tutorial as a base for this one, so if you haven’t completed it, I suggest you do so —it is geared towards beginners, and shouldn’t take too long.

This  iLogic tutorial was created to answer a reader’s inquiry as to “how to make the mortises auto-update when the tenon changes” when designing mortise and tenon joints. This has been accomplished. The table’s dimensions can easily be manipulated via the Parameter Editor.

Changing the Apron_Width parameter will automatically change the tenon width because we used the -( Apron_Width – ( Tenon_Shoulder * 2 ul ) ) formula to create the distance between the two planes that describe its width extents.  The Tenon_Shoulder parameter used in the formula is a driven dimension placed on one segment of a group of three equal segments constrained to the thickness of the apron. As the apron thickness changes, the tenon remains exactly 1/3 of the thickness, and that dimension is transferred via the driven dimension to the mortise in the Leg solid.

 

iLogic Tutorial Image-02 - Adding parameters for the iLogic code to come

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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 – 7 – Multi-Solids Notes

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Inventor Tutorial #7 image-01There 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:

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