Disconnected

                I will start by thanking all those contacting me and asking about my well being. I have gone quiet for the last month or so and not by choice but it all came rumbling down at once and I got disconnected from the regular schedule.

Unlike previous years when we would wind down and chill out for the last weeks of the year working on templates, libraries etc. we have been buried with work to a level where we had to work from home in any spare time and throughout the holidays.

On a separate level I decided to build a new computer for my trusted laptop was getting old, about 5 years now, and while it would still load and run Inventor, it was getting slow. The research, ordering of components, build up and software installation took about a month as well adding to the already busy schedule I had. On a personal note a lot has changed since I built my previous computer, especially in layout and manufacturing techniques for cases and the air flow is much improved but BIOS settings are incomprehensive now. It used to be that the only thing you could change in BIOS was time and date and now it's like servicing my car, I need half an hour to figure out which wrench to use.

Air flow is much improved nowadays, nice and clean layout.

Most importantly though, and what kept me from posting was the crash of my portable hard drive that I carry around with me everywhere and that holds everything I need for daily work. I have a tone of files there, CAD stuff, kits, libraries, templates, etc. but most importantly the blogs and about 50 drafts half way through. When I solve something or find a trick worth mentioning I create a new draft with 50-100 words, post some images and quick animations to capture the idea. I find this much faster than starting fresh every time. I was lost without the drafts and have focused on recovering the data there instead of creating new stuff from scratch.

Managed to recover all my blog drafts.

The hard drive didn’t crash and it doesn’t have bad blocks but the Master Boot Record (MBR) had been affected and I couldn’t read the partition table anymore. You‘ll say: “that’s easy to fix, just use recovery software or a MBR rebuild program” and you’re right but this was no ordinary drive but an encrypted one. Recovering from an encrypted drive which has lost its partition table is much harder I’ll tell you that but I’ve managed to get it all back and I am at full speed again. I think windows 10 on the laptop decided to initialize the drive and change its partition table from MBR to GPT (GUID Partition Table), it corrupted the layout and so the encryption software had problems locating the partition to decrypt.

Some other events like my son’s birthday along with all holiday preparations and visits have kept me away as well but it’s all gone and now I have a lot to catch up. I missed all the posts from Autodesk University, the forum, and all the blogs and I have been following. For those that follow me on G+ and other platforms, expect a flood of links and posts as I process them all.

Once again thank you for the kind messages and warm wishes, all the best to you all and a prosperous new year.

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Tube and Ppipe style error

I haven’t finished with all the tube and pipe posts, just got sidetracked with authoring fittings and decided to share the problems and solutions found along the way.

Can’t remember if this has always been a problem but in 2015 even though you follow all the known steps and procedures you don’t always end up with usable tube and pipe fittings. I have been publishing a couple of fittings for a new route style and I found that you either end up crashing inventor or they can’t be found while browsing on the new T&P (tube and pipe) style dialogue.

First thing I recommend is to check the pipe and fittings end treatment. In my case the same pipe can be but welded or socket welded while the fittings (elbows, tees) can only be socket welded or but welded. So I used jointed on the pipe and jointed on the fittings no matter what type of connections they really are. On the fittings use different engagement distances to differentiate between socket and but welding. This is to avoid warning message every time you edit the style about non matching end treatment connections. Remember I don't keep any styles inside the T&P template but import the ones needed when starting a new T&P assembly.

We don’t use ISOGEN exports but I like to have it setup just in case we will ever need to. In my ipart table I have setup ITEM-CODE and ITEM_Description columns that I have used in the tube and pipe authoring dialog. The only column that needs to be on the ipart table is ND (nominal diameter) that I use as key when publishing to content center and that Inventor uses in the tube and pipe style setup. You can add this column while editing the ipart in the custom tab or you add it while editing the ipart table with excel. I like excel because it can contain any information you can think of without messing the ipart table. As long as you leave an empty column (actually first cell of a column) between the info you want in the ipart and the rest of your data, you can have any info you like. Formulas, graphs, images, even catalog pages from the manufacturer.

Setup the ISOGEN properties and engagement correctly but leave the end treatment to jointed. I don’t have a shoulder for pipe limit stop but I have created planes that will serve as my engagement limit in the author dialog.

You need to understand that socket and but weld “End Treatment” filter on the library browser while setting up you style, will not get you these parts; “jointed” will. So don’t filter by socket or but weld, as you will see later I use Standard and maybe Material as my filters.

After you finish publishing to content center you will find  that a “Designation” column is added automatically by Inventor and it’s linked to the part’s “Design Tracking Properties: Size Designation” which is of type string and can be edited but not in the iproperties window (code or else).

 It seems this is used only for content center stored parts and represents a “succinct user-friendly universal way of providing a name for the component represented by a row in the table”. This is copied from an old pdf I found on iproperties and VBA by Sean Dotson at AU2014. Most of the times you will have a description of the item like “d10 x 1 – 250 Lg” and it doesn’t need to be unique. I think this has been left over and obsolete so I would just ignore it except when it gives you problems with tube and pipe style as it did to me.

                It seems that it can be accessed as “Content Library Component Properties” as well:

Content Library Component Properties {B9600981-DEE8-4547-8D7C-E525B3A1727A}

Common Name: Size Designation

ENUM Name: kSizeDesignationContentLibrary

Value: 12

Comments: Size Designation: String (VT)BSTR), Editable, No UI, Succinct, user-friendly and universal way of providing a name for the component represented by a row in the table.

Why have I gone to such length and dig out old posts and manuals to find the info on Designation? Because I found it to be the source to my problems, and there’s no logic to what my problem is as well.

I've been having this weird problem with tube and pipe styles. After I author and publish a tube and pipe fitting it won't show up for selection in tube and pipe styles until I edit the family table and delete the designation values. I don’t edit the column formula just select all values in this cell and delete them. Because the column is an expression the cells update automatically to same values but now the family appears in tube and pipe style editor.

As soon as I delete the designation values, the family appears in the styles editor as you can see in the animation bellow, where I have 2 inventor sessions running at the same time.

In the style component browser if you expand your part you will see individual members as long as you have a unique individual stock number. The members are shown by stock number and AU explanation was that part number can have custom lengths so not suitable to use here. I don’t pick individual components just the family when setting up the styles.

Hope you never run into these problems but if you do try deleting the designation values and see if it fixes it.
Next week I will share a couple of excel tricks for retrieving data from other spreadsheets with vlookup match and error handling like when value not found returning #NA so check back. Hopefully I will finish the rest of Tube and Pipe tutorials. I will also share this elbow and excel as separate file (it's embedded anyway in the ipart).

Later,

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