Autodesk Inventor 4

Autodesk Inventor 4 is the next-generation mechanical design platform from Autodesk. Rewritten from the ground up, the product is intended to serve as the new base for all of Autodesk’s MCAD products. The product seems to justify the hype it created, with a radically new adaptive modeling paradigm that should yield much faster designs as compared to the previous generation of products.

System requirements for running Autodesk Inverter 4 include a minimum requirement of PII/233 MHz with 128 MB RAM; while PII/350 MHz with 256 MB RAM is recommended, and PIII/450 MHz with 512 MB RAM is preferred.

Interface

Autodesk Inventor 4 makes a complete break with the traditional Autodesk interfaces found in products such as AutoCAD or Architectural/Mechanical Desktop. The command line has been done away with completely. The new interface is extremely intuitive and can be easily picked up by people with even rudimentary exposure to CAD or 3D modeling products. The new Help system is very good; we’ve never seen anything quite like it. Tools such as the Visual Syllabus make the help system extremely intuitive and easy to use. The online tutorials are also a pleasure to use.

Core features

The starting point of a design in Autodesk Inventor 4 is the sketch. You use familiar 2D drawing tools to sketch on a plane surface. A General Dimension command is available to dimension and constrain the sketch. Sketches can then be turned into parts or sheet metal objects.

Sketches can be turned into parts by extrusion or rotation about an axis. Such operations create a solid to which you apply what Autodesk Inventor 4 terms as Features. Examples of features are holes, fillets, and chamfers. Jumps between three- and two-dimensional space are simple–click on the Sketch tool, select a workplane on the 3D model, and then use the Look At tool to bring the selected surface into Plan view. Sketches can be shared between various segments of the part, so you don’t have to create a new sketch once you’ve rotated or extruded the previous sketch.

Sheet metal parts are created by first defining or selecting a sheet metal style and then creating a basic sketch for the sheet metal part using the sketching tools. The Face tool is the primary means of converting the sketch into a sheet metal face. Faces can be offset, cut, bent, chamfered, and rounded. The Flange tool lets you create flanges automatically. The Hole tool is for drilling holes into the part, while the Flat Pattern tool can be used to unfold the part into a flat pattern.

Parts created in this manner can be used as components that are assembled together to form the object being designed. Assembly is done in three dimensions, with parts being positioned and mated together. The Place Component tool is used to bring in external components into the assembly file. The Rotate and Move component tools can then be used to position the parts as desired. Components are joined together by using the Place Constraints tool. This tool is extremely versatile and can mate together parts subject to different kinds of constraints, such as aligning axes or angles between faces. A degrees of freedom feature allows visual checking of the constraints. The visibility of each component can be turned off, freeing the screen from unnecessary clutter. 

Production of final drawings is often a point of weakness in solid modeling packages, but this is not the case with Autodesk Inventor 4. The package provides a solid set of features for generating final drawings. To begin with, you can select a standard to be used for preparing final drawings. Inventor 4 supports a plethora of standards: ISO, ANSI, BSI, etc. You can also create your own standard. The actual process for creating a final drawing is simple.

First, select the component or assembly files that you want to include in the final drawing. After this, specify the view of the component or assembly in the final drawing, that is, top, bottom, left, right, etc. Specify a style and a scale and the appropriate view of the component is inserted into the final drawing. Once the component or assembly is in the drawing, you can automatically generate projected, auxiliary or section views by using the appropriate tool and dragging the view into place. The Get Model Dimension tool can be used to auto-generate dimensions. These dimensions can then be edited, moved, and deleted. A Parts List feature helps to generate a list of parts automatically, while the Balloons feature can be used to further annotate the drawing.

The story doesn’t end with the preparation of final drawings. Inventor carries the process one step further and facilitates the creation of presentations. The Create View tool is used to create a presentation view of the model. The presentation view can be exploded and the placement of each component tweaked. A precise rotation tools enables finely controlled rotation of the model for presentation purposes. Presentation models can also be animated. Finally, you can create detailed drawings containing exploded views of the model, complete with annotation balloons and parts lists.

Advanced features

Much of the power of the package comes from what are called adaptive parts. An adaptive part is one which will change its dimensions to meet preset constraints. For example, suppose you have two parts that are to be connected by a linkage. You can apply constraints to the parts so that the linkage governs their movement. Now suppose you modify an overall dimension. The linkage will resize itself to the new dimension. In fact, everything that you don’t dimension in an adaptive part is capable of resizing itself. The entire process is completely visual; you design the assembly as a whole without juggling around with the individual components.

Parameter-driven models are a good feature. Each dimension in a sketch can be linked to a parametric variable. The model can be updated automatically when the value of the underlying parameter changes. You can create tables of interdependent parameters in an Excel worksheet and directly link the spreadsheet to the model. Clicking on the Update tool will make Inventor update the model.

You can also reuse parts through what are called derived parts. A new part can be derived from an existing part and new features added to the derived part. Changes made to the base part can be reflected in the derived part by using the Update feature. Alternatively, you can snap the link with the base part and make the derived part a completely independent entity. 

Finally, the product contains a host of features for managing the design process itself, such as Engineers’ Notebook, Design Elements, and seamless integration with products such as AutoCAD and the Mechanical Desktop.

Summing up An extremely powerful tool that is meant to be an integral part of every

designer’s toolbox. 

Gautama Ahuja for PCQ Labs