Autodesk welcomes you to the 2014 season!

Hello and welcome to the 2014 FIRST season,

I will be monitoring the site each day and answering questions on topics such as, using Autodesk Inventor, managing data, and the Kit of Parts.

As always, I am looking forward to working with you as you design and build your robot.

Do you know where I can find the Autodesk 2013 FRC Database for parts? I’ve been looking for about a week and I haven’t found anything. Is there a link that I can download them or …?

Thank you,
The Jokers

We are currently putting together a new web page for FIRST that will have download links for 2011, 2012, and 2013 Kit of Parts. It will be ready in a few days. If you need it immediately let me know and we can work out where to post them for you.

That is perfectly fine. If it isn’t a bother, could you please let me know now where you plan on putting it, and when I can expect it to be done?

So where will they be posted and when do you think you will have them up?

The Kit of Parts for 2011 to 2013 are posted at,

http://www.autodesk.com/education/partners/first/recommended-software

Scroll down to the Additional Resources section.

How do we use the parts once we’ve opened it? I have the parts opened but their in different pages and I don’t understand how to actually move the parts…Is their a tutorial for using FRC parts or Autodesk downloads?

In the same location that you downloaded the KOP from there is section on training via webinars and other tutorials. I always recommend the Built By Design tutorials plus there are a number of tutorials by myself.

I am assuming from your comment that you are looking for help on assembling the parts. In both of the tutorials listed above you will find specific exercises on assembly techniques.

Any questions you can email me directly and I can give some assistance.

Any idea if Vault server 2014 will be posted to the education community? If not, can we use Vault server 2013 with Inventor 2014?

Vault Basic 2014 is available on the free software list.

http://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/vault-basic

Let me know if this works.

Is there any way to change Inventor 2014 files to Inventor 2013 files? Most people on my team’s CAD team have switched to 2014, but the school has decided to stay on 2013, so we have to switching back and can’t use any files that we did in 2014.

To use 2014 in 2013 the file must be saved as a STEP file in 2014. This is done via Export > CAD Format.

The file can then be opened in 2013, but will lose its feature history. For a part it will come into 2013 as a single object, no extrusions, revolved features etc.

Let me know if you have any other questions on this.

Okay, that is what I thought, but I figured that it would be worth asking.

I’ve been looking on the education community website for a while and I only see vault server 2013

Our entire school lab still uses 2012, is it possible for me to put both 2012 and 2014 on my laptop so I can use 2014 to convert to step format, while being able to use 2012 to be compatible with everything else? Or maybe just a 2014ipt/iam to stp utility?

Yes, I have 2012, 2013, and 2014 on my laptop for this reason.

We just switched to inventor 2014. Our Vault server is still 2013. Do we need to upgrade that as well?

Will the 2013 vault client work with 2014 server?

Will the 2104 Vault client work with the 2013 server?

Is there a link to answer these kind of question?

Here are a couple of links that may help now and as you move forward.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps?siteID=123112&id=4559524&linkID=9261340

The Autodesk Vault website also has videos and case studies to review.

For example, when I checked the 2014 / 2013 questions I found,

http://docs.autodesk.com/INSTALL_LICENSE/2014/ENU/Autodesk%20Installation%20Help/index.html?url=files/GUID-B64117E4-FA07-4145-8B5F-86973B13EB11.htm,topicNumber=d30e46908

In general it appears the answer is yes, but you must have compatible SQL versions.

I am looking for a stp viewer. Can you point me to one?

Inventor Fusion is one option.

In addition, I have seen this one recommended.

http://stpviewer.com/