Introduction to Autodesk Inventor
“Inventor is a parametric solid modeling program built for mechanical design and engineering. With this program, you can design 3D models of complex parts, find their engineering properties, and create dimensioned detail drawings. Then, you can combine the parts into assemblies along with standard components, such as fasteners, from a built-in library. Assemblies can be animated to study their motion and to check for part interference. Assembly drawings with parts lists and balloons are easy to create and, like part drawings, are directly related to the model. In Inventor Studio, you can create realistic renderings and video files of animated assemblies.” (Learning Autodesk Inventor 2010, 6th by Short & Dudek, p. 17)
An Inventor part is a collection of features. Take a bolt part for example. The entire bolt is the part but it is made up of features such as a 2D sketch showing the diameter of the bolt, an extrusion of the bolt length, an extrude polygon for the bolt hex head, and a coil feature to represent the threads on the bolt. The Inventor features are displayed in the Browser window.
“All of the features are listed in the part tree in the order in which they were created, with the first feature at the top. Features may be reordered by simply picking and dragging them to a new position in the part tree. Reordering features may alter the part. In addition, features cannot be moved above other features on which they are based. For example, if a hole has a fillet applied to it, the fillet feature cannot be moved above the hole feature. The last feature to be listed in any Inventor part tree is the End of Part marker. Its icon is a red octagon with a white X. This serves as an 'end-of-file' marker for the part or assembly.” (Learning Autodesk Inventor 2010, 6th by Short & Dudek, p. 18)
User Interface
Pack and Go
Options
Colors tab
Increase default size of Annotation
Application Options → General tab → Annotation scale
default 1 change to 1.25
How do I change the Inventor display area background color from a default gray gradient to a solid white color?
Setting Background Color: Inventor Application Menu (Uppercase I in top left corner) ? Options button ? Colors tab. Default color settings are: Color scheme - Winter Night, Background - Gradient.
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To set the background color to <b>white</b>, use color scheme <b>Presentation</b> and background <b>1 Color</b>. This is beneficial when making screen shots to display in a wiki or Word document. (see infiniteskills.com ? Learning Autodesk Inventor 2014. 01. Autodesk Inventor - Model Display).
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Display tab
How do you change default zoom behavior when using the wheel mouse to zoom in/out?
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Status Bar
The Autodesk Inventor Status Bar is displayed across the bottom of the active window and provides prompts on the next step in command. For example, if using the Line command, the status bar prompt is <I>Select start of line, drag off endpoint for tangent arc</I>.
Status Bar 1 - Displays information about the activate command
Status Bar 2 - Snap to Grid, restricts the movement of the cursor to a rectangular grid when a sketch command is active.
Status Bar 3 - Show or Hide All Constraints, toggles on/off all glyphs for constraints applied to the sketch geometry. This is just a snap shot, that is if you add new constraints, the glyphs will not be added, that is the view updated. To refresh the view to see all current constraints, need to toggle the All Constraints button on and off.
Status Bar 4 - drop down menu of either Value, Name, Expression, Tolerance, or Precise Value.
Status Bar 5 - Slice Graphics, removes the display of the geometry in front of the active sketch plane. This setting is for display only, it does not affect the geometry. This is a favorite feature for Inventor users.
Status Bar 6 - Show All Degrees of Freedom / Hide All Degrees of Freedom, displays or hides glyphs that represent unconstrained geometry.
Status Bar 7 - mouse coordinate location
Status Bar 8 - Constraint status, Fully Constrained
Status Bar 9 - Total Occurrences in Active Document
Status Bar 10 - open documents in session, capacity meter (not available in 64-bit operating systems) giving the
The Status Bar visibility can be turned on and off from the View ? User Interface menu.
References
Sketches
Inventor requires that geometry (e.g. lines, points, polygons, etc.) be created on a work/origin plane. Also when you draw a 2D sketch, Inventor will automatically orient the model view to the positive/normal side of the work plane. Remember, the blue side of the work plane is negative and the yellowish side is positive. If you don't like this default behavior, just right click on the work plane and select <b>Flip Normal</b> from the context menu. (see
Infiniteskills.com ? Learning Autodesk Inventor 2014 ? 05 Creating Work Features ? 04 Working With Work Features, by Adam Cooper) (Secure avi)
Simple Part
Sketch Constraints
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Yellow Dot (soft constraint)
Green Dot (hard constraint) - occurs when clicking on the origin point in a 2D sketch. If this happens, then can no longer move that portion of the sketch as it is locked/constrained.
Tangent Constraint
Fix Constraint
Snap Points
How to find snap points? When creating geometry, you can snap to a midpoint, center, or intersection. Right-click in the graphics window, and then select a snap location from the menu.
Plans and Tips for Sketches
Sketch Coordinates
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Q I created a sketch and want to move it to a different plane, how do I do this?
Polygon
Arc
Three Point Arc
Creates an arc defined by two endpoints and a point on the arc. The first click sets the first endpoint, the second sets the other endpoint (chord length), and the third point sets the arc direction and radius. (help.autodesk.com
3D arc reference)
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Linetypes
Autodesk Inventor Team
Wishlist - Inventor Ideas