Fast Tips for Fast Lives

Appearances  Appearances (the colour of your part) are usually applied through the top drop down menu.         They are stored in two places, locally in the file, or in the central library. Any appearance stored locally will only be available for that file. Whereas any appearance in the library section will be available for all files and all users, assuming that you share a common library.  You can see what is contained in each by clicking the colour wheel on the top bar: The appearance window The appearances browser is split into 3 parts: The window at the top shows all appearances stored locally in the document.  The area down the side shows all libraries relevant to your project file. The central area is where all library appearances are shown.  Any appearances that have been applied through the top drop down menu will appear in the local area. If you click the create new button in the bottom left, this will also appear in the local sectio...

  Pretty much every business has a template that shows this error message, but most people just click OK and carry on.  What are styles? Styles exist in many different environments in Inventor. They hold information that you want to standardise and use again and again. For instance, in the drawing environment it holds your dimension styles, font setups, layers, leader appearance etc. In part files it holds lighting and text styles. Assemblies, appearances and sheet metal styles include unfold rules. These styles can be saved in two places: Locally in the template itself. Centrally in the style library (this should be the same library your colleagues share) What does the error mean? What this dialogue basically says is, that the styles in the template do not match the central library styles.  How do you fix it? Open your template file. The location of this is shown under 'Folder Options' in the 'Projects' window on the 'Get Started' ribbon. Once the template is o...

Have you ever gone to place a drawing view of some sheet metal and the flat pattern option is greyed out? This little ditty I composed slips straight in your iLogic rule and simply unfolds the part and folds it back up again, creating a flat pattern in the process.  Stick it on a trigger just before save in your template file and never have to worry about this happening again! Dim oDoc As PartDocument oDoc = ThisDoc . Document Dim State As SheetMetalComponentDefinition State = oDoc . ComponentDefinition If State . HasFlatPattern = False Then State . Unfold ThisDoc . Document . ComponentDefinition . FlatPattern . ExitEdit End If

Insert useful parameters into your iProperties to create information that is always up to date. Click to export the parameter, then enter that parameter as an expression in your iProperty.  =<parameter> Try it yourself!

5 to beer O'clock and your boss just asked you to do an exploded drawing, but you don't know how? This crash course should teach you all you need to know to get you to the pub on time.  Check it:

People spend hours fannying around in Inventor Studio.  If you just want a still image, you don't even need to touch Studio, and you'll get exactly the same render in a much quicker time.  The only thing you can't do with this method is animations and transparent backgrounds.  So go ahead, wow your colleagues with your new found knowledge!

There are some cool features in the Inventor BOM, but Excel gives you even more control.  Here's how to leverage that power.  What do we want? More Power!!!