2009 Controls Inventor model?

[Tristan Lall]

I was just looking at the Pro/E model of the cRIO-9074* from NI's website; it's just a shell that's been filled in with the solidify tool. It will be geometrically accurate, but you won't be able to edit the parametric features.

The STEP file on the website seems essentially indistinguishable from the result of converting the Pro/E file to STEP using Pro/E Wildfire 4.0. That's this:


When imported back into Pro/E as an assembly, the STEP files have some individually selectable parts (like the DE9 on the left), but others are just merged into the whole (like the DE15 housing at the bottom of an expansion slot). Note that there are only 2 out of 8 DE15s depicted—that's annoying.

So, for those of us who want to be accurate in terms of the shape of the device (apart from the omitted D-subs, and with very minor variations from the cRIO-FRC) the NI-supplied model is pretty good. If you're going for the Inventor award, then maybe you'll find it necessary to grab the Pro/E model, duplicate the missing D-subs and graft them on, re-export it as a STEP for Inventor, and then insert the textures and decals (and hope the judges appreciate really nice imported geometry over passable native geometry). Either that, or dig up NI's actual production CAD files and convert them as necessary. And if you want something that is native-Inventor then you're pretty much stuck with modelling it from scratch. I can't see any good reason to use the IGES files.

As for weight, centre of gravity and other properties, I suspect that the best method (for Inventor or SolidWorks at least) would be to hardcode them. If you're using Pro/E, the hardcoding has never really worked right (because of where Pro/E grabs its data from when using model mass parameters in relations or drawings), but it should be good enough within the model itself.

And for anyone looking for some of the dimensions of the cRIO-9074 device, here's a drawing with a few useful dimensions.

*FIRST teams get the cRIO-FRC instead, but it's mechanically similar.