Wednesday 29 January 2014

Inventor Threads BSW BSF

I know tomorrow you will have the usual weekly post but here's something worth mentioning.

Today a old friend asked me if there's a way of getting the British Standard Whitworth (BSW) and British Standard Fine (BSF) in Inventor.

I don't think it's a matter of having a model with correct dimensions but rather showing the correct info in Hole Note.

I have attached the Thread.xls file that Inventor uses and it contains these tables as well.

All you have to do is locate the file path of your Design Data, make a backup of the existing Thread.xls and replace it with the one bellow.

In order to find out where your Design Data folder is you can go to Options / File / and look at the third option down. If is not self evident (ideally will be on the network on a shared folder for all users) then you can click the Explore button for more details.


I have rearranged the order the threads are shown in Inventor because we use metric most of the time and instead of the ANSI default type.

You can change that by opening the Thread.xls file and change the Sort Order number. You don't need to change the sheet position within the workbook just change the number and make sure the number is not used for another thread type.


Please remember that you need to restart inventor for changes to take effect. Inventor opens the file the first time you use Hole function and keeps it in memory until restarted.
And here's the xls file, use it at your own risk.

ADS


Update June 2014: It seems design data has changed in release 2015 so you need to manually add the table again. They have added new columns Thread Depth, and Thread Runouts so migrating the file won't help.

 Check beinginventive.typepad.com for more details.

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2 comments:

  1. Sounds good. Now, what happens when someone opens a CAD drawing/model on a different computer without access to your customized thread.xls file? Do the thread definitions fail?

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    Replies
    1. The CAD drawing/model will still have the thread data on it. Hole note in the drawing will exist and the model will contain the thread type with just the sizes used in the model available.

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