Need help with inventor-ing objects

[rohit]

Does anyone know how to inventor:

A mousetrap spring
A bungee cord

And I need help with putting gravity properties on an item.
And I need help with wiring (dont know how to do it in inventor)
And I need help with tubes (for pneumatics)

I'm the only person who does inventor in my team and this is my first year doing it, so im really confused...

[Dan Zollman]

For a mousetrap spring and bungee cord, if you don't need them to be flexible, just use a coil with extrusions on each end for the mousetrap spring and a sweep for the bungee cord. To make them flexible, you'll have to use adaptivity, which will allow the size and shape of the parts to change along with changes in the assembly position. I can't really be any more specific without more information about the specific design of the mechanisms.

If you're talking about mass properties, you can set that in the document settings for the part, or, in each part file, go to Format>Styles Editor and set materials. Make sure the density value for each material is correct. To actually simulate gravity when parts are moving, the only place you can do that is in Dynamic Simulation. I don't know why you'd need that in any other context.

Wiring is done with Cable and Harness; Tubes with Tube & Pipe. You can learn each of those from the Routed Systems Getting Started manual, which comes with Inventor. It's located at a file path that looks something like this:
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 11\PSS\AIP11_RoutedSys_GetStart.pdf
That's a 400 page manual, though, and the regular Inventor Help from the Help menu would be faster. Either way, you might consider saving wiring and tubing for last or skipping one of them, because it can take a long time to learn and model all of the wires and tubes.

[rohit]

Thanks for the help. I will build the items for now and do the material properties after the robot is shipped.