I find myself saying this a lot right now. Probably because my oldest son just got his temps. But it also pertains to Inventor as well. Often when engineers are forced to make the pretty pictures that marketing or sales wants them to produce you often spend a lot of time on the View Tab of Inventor. Well, not me. I normally customize my environment so that I can quickly switch things up without much Ribbon jumping. What I am about to show you is also VERY good for when you are working with large assemblies and want to increase... Continue reading

With Inventor 2020 and Inventor 2019.4 update on the very near horizon, let's take a moment and remember the awesome updates we received in Inventor 2019.1 and 2019.2. What about 2019.3 you ask? Well, that one was all stability and performance updates with no new features or shiny buttons. Some users still don't have 2019.1 installed and its been out for a long time. Sometimes updates get missed, it happens. So let's take a look at what was added in 2019.2 and get some of the Inventor updates installed while you wait for 2020! Previous post on 2019.1 Updates Content... Continue reading

With Inventor 2020 and Inventor 2019.4 update on the very near horizon, let's take a moment and remember the awesome updates we received in Inventor 2019.1 and 2019.2. What about 2019.3 you ask? Well, that one was all stability and performance updates with no new features or shiny buttons. Some users still don't have 2019.1 installed and its been out for a long time. Sometimes updates get missed, it happens. So let's take a look at what was added in 2019.1 and get some of the Inventor updates installed while you wait for 2020! Frame Generator wish list bonanza! The... Continue reading

It never fails...all the work I want to do to my files in the Bill of Material Editor...put on hold because I forgot to check out the files from Vault before I tried to modify them. Wait...not anymore! Starting with Inventor and Vault 2019 you can now check out a file from the BOM Editor with the right click menu. Make sure you submit your ideas to Autodesk to get them added to the software, this is just one of many ideas put in through the Idea Station. Continue reading

With the upcoming release of Inventor 2020, I have updated my Translators sheet to show the upgraded CAD and neutral file format translator cheat sheet. As a reminder the AnyCAD ability of Inventor is dependent upon the upcoming release of Inventor 2019.4 to allow for use of Inventor 2020 files inside of Inventor 2019.4. Be sure to check out our other post highlighting some of the new features of Inventor 2020! Download Inventor File Translations 2019-2020 With AnyCAD Reference Continue reading

In this first of several posts we are going to dig into what the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection has to offer in regards to analyzing how our products are made through their process. Analyzing a process is very important when it comes to your business and is aimed squarely at helping solve two problems that can help increase productivity and understand bottlenecks. Optimizing current methods by adjusting variables in the process. Looking ahead for future planning such as adding a new machine or line or even another operator Process Analysis vs. AutoCAD Material Flow Essentially, we have two tools... Continue reading

Even though Inventor 2018.2 is out now, there was one setting in 2018.1 that deserves to be mentioned in case you missed it. In Inventor 2018.1 there was new setting added that would automatically change Projected geometry to Construction geometry. Why is this an awesome addition you ask? Well, commonly when Projected Geometry is used as profiles for geometry creation, it can cause problems if previous features are damaged. The best course of action to maintain stable geometry is to use new geometry created using the sketching tools instead and simply referencing the construction geometry. This setting is turned off... Continue reading

Autodesk Inventor's Task Scheduler has a lot of tools to perform common tasks to a large set of files as a headless operation. Tasks such as Save As, Export, Migrate, Check in to Vault, and many others. When you perform these tasks on large sets of files it can cause Task Scheduler to degrade in performance. There are a couple things you can do to make Task Scheduler run smoother. The first tip I will give you is before you do anything with Task Scheduler, take a backup of the database it generates. Task Scheduler will bloat this database and... Continue reading

This year at Autodesk University I conducted a class on loading large amounts of data in an Autodesk Vault system. This class is now available on the Autodesk University website. Here is the handout and powerpoint in case you do not yet have the FREE access to Autodesk University. Link to the class: Airing Dirty Laundry Powerpoint: Download IM124378 - Airing Dirty Laundry Handout: Download IM124378-Flayler-AU2017 KEY LEARNING Develop best practices for loading data into Vault Learn how to break down an Autoloader scan into consumable data Learn how to apply Task Scheduler to automate tasks in the migration and... Continue reading

Autodesk Inventor uses internal hyperlinks embedded into assembly, drawing, and presentation files in order to ensure proper updating of files as the modeling and subassemblies change. This is similar to OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) in that when the referenced file changes the corresponding document updates accordingly. Inventor will create OLE links in certain scenarios such as when images are inserted for use in Decals or for when an image map is used in a texture or appearance. OLE links are also created when running the default settings for Inventor’s Finite Element Analysis module located in the Professional version of... Continue reading

There are times when an image needs to be included in a drawing. For example, a client logo that needs to be part of the title block. It would be better to convert the logo into a block object by tracing over the image in AutoCAD and applying hatching as needed. But there are some logos that are not so simple and therefore using an embedded image is preferred. If you have dragged and dropped the image into the drawing or used the OLE method, you realize that file is being referenced (X-REF) and therefore the separate picture file needs... Continue reading

Following up on last week's blog post about our Vault Metadata Export and Update, I got a lot of questions about the Batch Rename tool built into our 2017 version of the tools. What this essentially does is allows a sweeping change to your filenames when you have issues arising such as duplicates or inconsistently named files. In order to process our batch rename you must first get an extraction from Vault of your filenames in which you can perform your own duplicate search with Excel formulas quite easily. I normally will sort my files by filename and then perform... Continue reading

Autodesk Vault houses all your important CAD data and sometimes that data needs to be adjusted or extracted on a large scale. This could be due to new CAD properties that need to be added, updates to costing, vendors, part numbers or a whole host of other reasons. Maybe you need to map your Inventor revision to your new Vault Professional or Workgroup Vault Revision. Maybe you need mass update Part Numbers that are not in sync with your filenames. Since Autodesk does not have a global export of UDP (User Defined Properties), IMAGINiT has developed tools to aid in... Continue reading

Data Management is often just as important to daily engineering activities as actual design. Ensuring the right data is being consumed electronically or being accessed by the team is paramount to reducing errors, rework, and maintaining compliance in the engineering workflow. As you already know Autodesk provides Autodesk Vault for free to the majority of its users and offers higher end versions of this software on a subscription basis. Vault however is not the pinnacle of this discussion. Often companies will use competing software that incorporates Product Data Management (PDM), Product Lifecycle Managment (PLM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other... Continue reading

On the first day of an Inventor class I often find myself conflicted to the point of exhaustion when a student asks me the following question... "Why is there a dialog box AND a Mini-Toolbar to work with the standard commands?" To that I often reach back into my AutoCAD days and say...its just another way to do the same thing like in AutoCAD. I've always sorta hated that response because I want an interface that is consistent and complete and the Mini-Toolbar is not that. Now, I am not saying I don't like the Mini-Toolbar, I just wish that... Continue reading

The Inventor 2017 R2 update is available to subscription customers and includes new features, other product enhancements, as well as various fixes. Inventor 2017 Service Pack 1 is available to customers without subscription and contains only fixes. Customers with Subscription Autodesk Inventor 2017 R2 includes multiple fixes plus over 40 enhancements driven directly from user feedback, including submissions via the Inventor Ideas webpage. Improvements have been made in the presentation environment, tangent selection, user interface, bill of material, ballooning, and drawings. For details regarding the enhancements, follow the link below for more on What’s New. Autodesk Inventor 2017 R2 includes... Continue reading

Sometimes we as Inventor users we find ourselves scratching our heads at some dialog boxes. This usually is more prominent when we have multiple users wrecking havoc in an unconstrained environment. One such dialog I see with users with poor file management or design practices is the dreaded "Different Than Expected" error message when you open up a file. Much like a smaller tax return or a bad blind date, we are usually surprised with the upfront travesty to our eyes and we feel an immediate pit in our stomach because the assembly should have opened cleanly, the pool should... Continue reading

With so many types of files you can import and export with Autodesk Inventor, sometimes it is very helpful just to have these available as a handy cheat sheet. These two single sheets list the translators available for Autodesk Inventor 2015-2017 and the AnyCAD Reference and Convert options. Download Inventor File Translations 2016-2017 With AnyCAD Reference Download Inventor File Translations 2015-2017 Continue reading

Autodesk has over the years added a lot of standard tools for drawing documentation to Inventor, however, sometimes they just totally miss one that gets used a lot in different fields. Dowel symbols are used a lot in a lot of industries including furniture and die making, however despite its presence in other 3D CAD systems, it has yet to make an appearance in Inventor. To help alleviate this there is an app in the Autodesk Inventor Exchange store called QuickDowel from 3D Quick Tools Limited. In this post we will take a look at this tools as well as... Continue reading

What do rappers, drag racers, and engineers all have in common? They love to talk about inches. Now two of those three talk more about size in reference to their tires while engineers...its all about monitor size. I once overheard an engineer saying he "rolls on 32s", and I thought to myself he must have a Jeep lift kit and some really awesome mudding tires. Well I was wrong... it was his HP monitors. What does this have to do with the title of the post? Mouse travel my friends, mouse travel. The more time you spend in your Ribbon... Continue reading

Inventor 2016 introduced a smoother method of placing views in to drawings. I posted on these changes last week so I thought I would continue with another tip today. In previous versions of Inventor there was a button called Change View Orientation that you would select in the event that you were not getting Inventor to give you the view that you really want in your drawing. With the inclusion of the View Cube as part of the selection process in Inventor 2016, that button is no longer needed as much as it used to be. The ability to do... Continue reading

I had a follow up to my post earlier this week on scaling drawing views in Inventor. The question was... How do I define the scale list in my drawing view? Well, here is your answer... You have to ensure you can make changes to your Styles and Standards library first. This is usually done by setting the value on the Inventor project file to Read/Write. From there, go to your Styles and Standards library and choose the Active Standard you are currently using. Change the preset values dropdown to scale and then add and remove scales at leisure. When... Continue reading

The new Base View command in Inventor 2016 has been nothing short of awesome for me. I love that I can select my orientation right from the view cube or project and delete views very quickly. However there is one setting here that is not as discoverable to users and that is the ability to Scale the view dynamically or by known values. The little green corners around the Base View preview look like perhaps they are just framing cursors to identify the boundary, but they are actually in fact scale adjustments. Depending on my scale list in my Styles... Continue reading

Well, its been well over a month since I presented my class at AU in Las Vegas this past year on using AutoCAD Underlays in Autodesk Inventor. Every year Autodesk makes the recordings available to users that cannot attend the convention so now is a good time to check them out (just head over to the Autodesk University webpage). I had a great time this past year and I had a little fun with an otherwise dry topic of AutoCAD material interacting with Inventor. This year I employed Bob the Business Cat as my co-speaker to help me out. If... Continue reading