Assembly Stress Analysis

[Gherkinman]

I know it is possible to construct a stress analysis on a single .ipt, but it would be extremely useful if inventor provided the capability to conduct a stress analysis on an entire .iam. Does anybody know if it is even possible to do this and if so can you please post how?

[grsnovi]

Inventor does not currently do stress analysis of assemblies (it is planned for a future release). You can however derive your assembly into a single part and then analyze the part. This may or may not be useful depending on the complexity of your assembly and how close you need to analyze the stress.

[Gherkinman]

How exactly does one derive an assembly down to a single component. I tried googling it but no luck. This sounds like a useful technique in more than one way and I would very much like to be able to utilize it.

[JD Mather]

Start a new part (ipt) file.
Exit sketch.
Click Derived Component.
Select the assembly (iam) file.
+ for all parts you want combined.

This might give you some information for a rigid assembly derived as a single part. If you are interested in the FEA of a moving part within it's range of motion in the assembly check out Applications>Dynamic Simulation. You can assign Gravity and other forces and then output a series of time-steps for FEA analysis.
Have your teacher check with the Inventor reseller for your area and perhaps he can get you the free Autodesk Official Training Curriculum for Dynamic Simulation and FEA pdf file for Inventor 11. There were changes to the interface for r2008 but between that "book" and the tutorials in r2008 you might be able to learn some useful stuff. If your teacher has a budget you could order the new AOTC book from http://estore.autodesk.com
This is fairly complex stuff - really impressive if you can demonstrate some results. If you run into trouble post what you have and you might be able to get some help.