Thursday 26 June 2014

Parts List with Thumbnails

                If you need to do a BOM report you can do that really easy from within the BOM but it doesn’t export thumbnails. For the engineer working on the project it might be easy to identify parts by description and part number but it’s almost impossible to others.
                There is a small addon on modthemachine that can do that, but it exports to Word because Excel doesn’t support embedded images in table cell. So instead of having floating images in Excel you can get embedded images in Word tables.
                The program creates a small icon in the Drawing environment Tools \ Report \ Thumbnail Parts List. In order to use it you need to place a parts list in the drawing. You don’t need to add any views, just go to Annotate \ Table \ Parts List.

                The addon will export whatever the Parts List displays, so it’s best to place the table with “All Levels” in the parts list window. Now you can expand and collapse levels, change description and chose different columns, play with filters, group settings and even type custom values just like I did on my washer.



                When you are finished customising the table use the report buttons under tools to generate a word document. Don’t use word while it’s working because it will generate the table in the current word session so don’t make other word windows active. You can check progress in Inventor lower left corner, status bar.

                When finished, you must save the word document because it doesn’t get save automatically.

                The addon and VBCode is on modthemachine website but I have attached it as well in case it gets pulled off.


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Wednesday 25 June 2014

Space Mouse wireless

3Dconnexion has release the famous Space Mouse in wireless version. It works with/without usb cable and it claims to have 2 months autonomy on the battery.

Not available to purchase in UK yet; just wondered what the price might be.

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Thursday 19 June 2014

Edit shaft generator sketches

    I don't like to use shaft generator but some people do and at times I need to edit them. Most likely I need to add tolerances and I like them to stick to the model instead of dropping them on drawing dimensions.
    In the shaft generator you can't add tolerances, by some weird logic Inventor doesn't allow you to.


    Some are available if you edit the shaft and turn the visibility of the main sketch on. You can then right click on dimensions and choose dimension properties. Then you can call them on the drawing with retrieve model dimensions.





    The shaft sketches are locked and can only be editable from within the parent assembly via Edit using Design Accelerator. If you lost that assembly or promoted/demoted components than the shaft becomes locked.




    You can unlock it with a bit of visual basic code.

    1. Open the shaft part
    2. Select the main sketch under first Revolve.
    3. Open Visual Basic Editor with Alt+F11 or go to Tools/VBA Editor.

    4. Expand "Document.Project(Shaft.ipt)" (or whatever your filename).
    5. Paste the following in the "Module1" under your file
Public Sub Func1()
ThisApplication.ActiveDocument.SelectSet(1).DisabledActionTypes = 0
End Sub




    6. Run macro by pressing on F5 or up in the menu under Run.
    7. Close VBA Editor and edit the sketch.







    Now you can add tolerances, or change geometry in any mode. I would use AutoContraints to connect end points and geometry firs.






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Thursday 12 June 2014

Showcase 2015 available

Showcase is available now, Just posted yesterday that it wasn’t. Although on the Autodesk web page it tells you that 2015 is not available and if you want it will download and install 2014 it actually installs 2015. I just tried it out and it works.

We use the product design suite so I had to look in Inventor for the serial number and the network license server, then on Autodesk Product Keys here to get it to install. 
Couple of keys
Autodesk Plant Design Suite Premium 2015763G1
Autodesk Plant Design Suite Standard 2015788G1
Autodesk Plant Design Suite Ultimate 2015764G1
Autodesk Product Design Suite Premium 2015782G1
Autodesk Product Design Suite Standard 2015783G1
Autodesk Product Design Suite Ultimate 2015781G1



Showcase download page not updated yet.



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Showcase 2015 missing

Apparently Autodesk was thinking of getting rid of Showcase, Sketchbook Designer, Mudbox, and Alias Design from the Product Design Suite 2015.
This caused a lot of discussions on the forums and eventually forced Autodesk to put it back in the Design Suite. My guess is that it wasn’t ready on time or they were dropping it because at this moment Showcase 2015 is not available. You can’t even get it separately.

This is the link to the article where it states:

Due to the feedback we received from customers in the last couple of weeks we are pleased to announce that our Autodesk Product Design Suite 2015 customers will be able to use Autodesk Showcase 2015 and Autodesk Alias Design 2015 at no extra charge.

·         We will deliver both products to all Product Design Suite 2015 customers (including non-subscribers)
·         Showcase 2015 will be made available for both Product Design Suites Premium and Ultimate 2015 editions by end of April
·         Alias Design 2015 will be made available for Product Design Suite Ultimate only by end of April
If you would like to download your software now, please visit our Virtual Agent for a link.

As more details become available we will be sure to add updates so stay tuned!

I wonder what were they thinking, I was going to start learning 3dmax at some point but Showcase made it so much easier. I have done some nice work with it and I am glad they have reconsidered.



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Wednesday 11 June 2014

AIP 2015 Reflective shaded views

Up until Inventor 2012 you could edit the registry and remove reflections from the shaded views of the drawing. Once it changed to Appearances you can't anymore.

You just needed to add a DWORD "Suppress Specular Color"=dword:00000001 in [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\Inventor\Regi​stryVersionXX\Applets\DrawingLayout\Preferences\​] and restart inventor. The XX is your inventor version; if you browse you’ll know which one to pick.

Just tried it in AIP 2015 and it's not working.


Bummer



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AutoCAD 2015 recently used files

Just had Product Design Suite 2015 installed and went trough the hassle of setting my options when I found a bug.
I wanted to set the number of recently used files to 50 as the tooltip suggests it maximum and it didn't want hear it.
Error popped out saying "Enter a digit between 0 and 10".

Nice one.


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Thursday 5 June 2014

Ballooned items parts list


Every once in a while you need to do a quick layout and you don’t have time to polish the BOM and set proper phantom and reference items, and you just want a quick part list as well. Autodesk Inventor allows you to do a filter on the parts list and show ballooned items only:

            1.Place the parts list and edit it.

            3.Click on Filter button at the top.

            4.Select Ballooned items only.


            5.Close parts list editor and start putting balloons on the items you want to show up in the table.





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And of course the video: