Saturday, 7 January 2017

INVENTOR OPEN LIBRARY

I’ve been toying with the idea of an open library for a long time. I am of course referring to an open library of Inventor resources, parts, iparts, ifeatures, tube & pipe fittings, content center libraries, illogic routines and snippets, customization files, manuals, links, etc.

my type of place to be...

In other words anything Inventor related. There are a lot of websites out there where you can find cad files and resources and I’ve shared my preferred list before so why go through all the trouble and effort of doing this instead of using the already existing services?

                More than anything I am driven to share a library of parts authored as TP fittings ready to use in your projects.

                I feel that there are not enough T&P users out there to drive growth and force Autodesk to rethink its portfolio. A lot of people don’t use TP because of lacking resources like manuals, libraries etc.

                Not sure if you are aware but the new collections presented by Autodesk suck and I was better off with suites that we had before. Why? Because I had the Factory Design Suite which had AutoCAD P&ID, Inventor with routed systems, Plant 3D, etc..

                Now we either get Inventor (PRODUCT DESIGN COLLECTION), or we get AutoCAD P&ID and Plant 3D (ARCHITECTURE, ENGINEERING & CONSTRUCTION COLLECTION) but nothing in between.

                I bet there aren’t many companies are out there who manage to do plants without the need to create skids (inventor frame generator, FEA, etc.). Most of our plants are either containerized, skids, cabinets or enclosure type of installation.

                Everyone expects modular systems which they can rip and throw when they want instead of having a myriad number of pipe routes, fittings and equipment spawning over several rooms, floors, buildings.

                  With this in mind I wanted to see if we can find a solution and share the knowledge but it would do us no good if we don’t collectively share our files so my question to you is:

                Would you be willing to share your library of fittings? Other Inventor resources?

                I have sent my entire library out more than once and I’ve only asked that you use it at your own risk. Some might argue the benefits of this but I can tell you they pay off and I got lots of messages on fixing various errors which would have proven difficult to find otherwise.

                Second part of the problem is where, how to store and share this.

                I was thinking to use a single DropBox, Google Drive, Name Your Preferred Here, online storage systems and they would just be a list of folds with all the parts which you can download as a whole or partially.

                This however requires a business account (size wize) and while I can pay for this myself it needs to live outside me and outlive my personal carrier.

                Who knows, I might win the lottery and decide to do this for living but most likely I ... won’t and might need to change careers.

                I do suggest the download is available for those who make a small contribution, as small permitted, like 0.1 YourCurrency, just so that it’s still free but helps maintain it.

                If enough money are raised to sustain the storage then the excess would be used to hire someone and develop new libraries. We’ll do a pool and we vote for our most needed library, we find some students form a low cost labour part of the world and hire them to help us build it.

                We will also need a couple of administrators to oversee this and make sure the funds go to the right place, permissions are set, download links are working, etc..

                Have no idea if this will work, if I am asking too much, so I will end by asking you to please get in contact and give me your personal thoughts on the matter. What do you think will work, what won’t, are you willing to share your library, have some storage ideas, etc.


GET IN TOUCH,
ADS.
               



photo credit: loop_oh two doors (license)