Inventor's Special Functions

[Ben Martin]

I thought I'd ask everyone whether or not they use a lot of the special features provided by Inventor, like belt generators and iparts. Since many of the same parts can be made using the extrude or loft functions, I was curious who chooses to use the basic features over the more advanced ones.

We often stick to using the basic features, but occasionally we might make an ipart or use an advanced function in Inventor Studio.

We don't have the machining ability to fabricate most things that would be made with any of the advanced functions (loft, etc), and so I mostly stick with the basics. However, I have become a huge fan of design accelerator, so I guess I do use one advanced function...

[Robert Thacker-]

Our team uses iparts, ifeatures, Inventor studio, wiring, you name, we probably have messed with it. In short, you should defenitely use those features because those are not advanced aspects of the program. They are the basic concepts to get down in order to design any kind of CAD creation you could possibly think of.

The design accelerator is used to quickly spit out prototype designs. Our team didn't mess with it much, really. Mostly because our servor kicked out on us and it was too much of a mess to put back together.

[Elgin Clock]

We used the chain feature to do some calculations for gear ratio this year, sprocket sized, and amount of chain we would need for the robot..
And by we, I mean some students and another mentor with me looking on going.. hmm.. Inventor does have some nifty CAD features Solidworks doesn't. Maybe it is in my best interest to learn it after all.

And then it took us half an hour to figure out how to export a part to be machined by one of our sponsors... and I retracted that thought... to a certain extent.

(psst.. Right Click > Export) Who knew? LOL

[Molten]

If you know the basics well enough and are able to creatively use them in new ways then you do not need any advanced features. As to whether or not they are nice, of course they are. I have been drafting for three years and am the guy that everyone comes to for help. I have yet to come acrossed an actual mechanical part that I could not make out of the first list of features.

[Robert Thacker-]

No, I disagree. Judges will look at what kind of work you do and how you went about to do it. I mean, you may master the simple basics to get the idea and maybe you can get what you want, but you still do not truly know the program.

[JasJ002]

In response to temper.... I'm geussing you don't do animations then. Back in Inventor 8 you would spend 3 days writing equations to get a 30 second animation. Now you can spend 30 minutes to accomplish the same thing. Yes you can do all of the same things, but beleive me a lot of them make your day a lot easier.

[Ben Martin]

Originally Posted by Robert Thacker-

No, I disagree. Judges will look at what kind of work you do and how you went about to do it. I mean, you may master the simple basics to get the idea and maybe you can get what you want, but you still do not truly know the program.

Sorry, Robert, but I think I have to agree with Temper Metal. For the most part, and for simplicity sake, we usually stick with extrusions instead of holes and things like that. Though the advanced features are neat and will probably help you with your Inventor Award submission, we are usually speed-drafting during the build season and choosing the most-familiar method of making parts. This usually involves lots and lots of extrusions.

Part of the problem, though, is that we really haven't had the time to run all the tutorials. We might try some of them during the off season.

The exception to all of this is Inventor Studio and the animations. There, we do try to learn the advanced features since Inventor Studio isn't completely covered in our school's CAD class.

[Molten]

I have used animations before, but as a draftsman I do not dirty my hands much with the such. I find that it falls under the group of the animator, not the draftsmen. Also, just because I choose not to use such advanced features, does not mean I do not know how to. The way I see it, a master craftsmen may know how to use hundreds of tools, but how many more times do the use the hammer over the more unusual tools?

[JasJ002]

temper you cannot tell me that there is any advantage from inventor 8 to 10 in multiple constraint animation. And it is also the engineers job to sell a product, beleive me you draw something, and animate it, before you build when related to expensive products. A 20,000 dollar robot is one thing, a multi million dollar airplane is another.

[Molten]

First off... JasJ002, It is never the job of the engineer to draft, animate, or sale. These are all supplementary jobs. The Drafting should be done by a draftsmen, the animating should be done by an animator(preferably on 3dsmax), and the saling should be done by the salesmen. Though a good engineer should be able to do all of this at the same time, It is not a neccessity. I draft and sell my ideas. That just means that I am more then an engineer, I am a draftsman and salesman also. Besides, as far as FIRST goes, how many people draw, animate, and sell their robot all before making it? Something tells me you cut your deadlines really close. (On a side note, does your robot really cost 20,000 dollars? Ours costs maybe 7,500 dollars. And that is with the overpriced kit of parts. If we got rid of that we could make one 3,000 if we felt like being generous with our budget.) Just trying to keep statistics real.

[Greg Needel]

Originally Posted by Temper Metal

It is never the job of the engineer to draft, animate, or sale. These are all supplementary jobs. The Drafting should be done by a draftsmen, the animating should be done by an animator(preferably on 3dsmax), and the saling should be done by the salesmen. Though a good engineer should be able to do all of this at the same time, It is not a neccessity.

This is not true anymore. Over the past few years there has been a transition to a state where the engineer IS all of these things. If you walk in to a random company and say I would like to talk to a drafter they will most likely look at you funny. The truth of the situation is that the outsourcing of jobs has forced companies to get rid of the extra people involved in the process. The way it works now is that an engineer designs directly in CAD and moves on. In some cases there will be detailers who typically look at the designs before they are manufactured to fix small errors and look for constancies, but this is a rare case. Now obviously every company does things their own way but financially it doesn't make sense to have that many people involved in the process, when 1 person can do it.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

This is not true anymore. Over the past few years there has been a transition to a state where the engineer IS all of these things. If you walk in to a random company and say I would like to talk to a drafter they will most likely look at you funny. The truth of the situation is that the outsourcing of jobs has forced companies to get rid of the extra people involved in the process. The way it works now is that an engineer designs directly in CAD and moves on. In some cases there will be detailers who typically look at the designs before they are manufactured to fix small errors and look for constancies, but this is a rare case. Now obviously every company does things their own way but financially it doesn't make sense to have that many people involved in the process, when 1 person can do it.

This is something that varies significantly from industry to industry. In the mechanical world, it is increasingly common for the engineers to do their own drafting in some CAD software, because modern software is faster and easier to use, and lets them work on both the drawings and the design itself simultaneously. In the civil/structural/architectural world, it's still pretty common to have the engineer work on the calculations, and a rough design, and pass it on to a detail drafter to finish off.

Also, I'm not sure that it's just an outsourcing thing. Unfortunately, it's become common to say "outsourcing" when really, a more appropriate description would be "competitive pressure" from all levels.

Originally Posted by Temper Metal

If you know the basics well enough and are able to creatively use them in new ways then you do not need any advanced features.

Originally Posted by Temper Metal

Also, just because I choose not to use such advanced features, does not mean I do not know how to.

The advanced features aren't always appropriate, but they're not there for decoration either. While you could extrude the hole, add the thread surface, add the note, create a centre axis, etc. by hand, the hole tool does that at once, and provides a convenient UI to do it with. For designs that need to include all of that information, that's a timesaving feature. Plus, it's a convenient way to group all of those things when you go to pattern the feature. And for screw holes, it already includes a database of thread styles and hole diameters, so that you don't need to look those things up every time you need a hole.

[Adam Y.]

Originally Posted by Temper Metal

First off... JasJ002, It is never the job of the engineer to draft, animate, or sale.

I would agree with you but I am an electrical engineer student. Bad drafting can cause major design problems if you don't understand the fundamentals. It's ironic because a lot of the problems you see in mechanical engineering have analogs in electrical engineering.

[SgtMillhouse648]

I use the design accelerator function a little bit for belts and things like that, but I am really fond of the dynamic simulator for quick animations. It is not very useful for animating parts on a robot, but for certain things it is very handy. The only problem is converting constraints over from the assy. that gets hectic sometimes. Inventor Studio is nice for showing off things once they are completed. The wiring comes in handy too