AUGIWorld Magazine - May/June 2008 - (Page 12)

Designing for Auto-Dimensioning Using “Retrieve Dimension” within the drawing editor in Autodesk® Inventor can and does cause quite a few headaches. Why headaches? Don’t you just right-click within your view and, from the shortcut menu, select “Retrieve Dimensions” and they magically appear? Exactly—they sure do. But are they the dimensions you want to send to manufacturing to machine the part or are they the dimensions you used to design the part? Raise your hand if you design a part one way, then when you place dimensions on your drawing the way they are needed for manufacturing, they are not the same as you placed the dimensions for design. I can see most of you didn’t raise your hand (and you thought no one was watching!) I don’t use this feature either because the dimensions don’t drop the way I need them for detailing a part for manufacturing. There are many engineers and designers who don’t use this feature with their solid modeling; did you notice I said solid modeling and not just Inventor? I have used other solid modelers over the years, and I have talked with other designers of the other packages. We don’t all dimension for manufacturing during the design process with Auto-Dimensioning in mind. So, just how do we design a part with manufacturing and Auto-Dimensioning? What I will discuss is what I have learned and some of what I have done to implement the Auto-Dimension feature. I still don’t use it very often, but it is sure is great when I can use this feature. See Figure 1 for a basic part design. I need the slot to be 2.000 from the left, and the slot to be .750 deep and .750 wide. This is not how 12 our manufacturing system is set up. We dimension everything from a base line, for example, from the left and from the bottom. Figure 1 is how my design intent is set up. I will take this and extrude 0.50, then I will start a new drawing and use this for my base part. Start a new drawing, right-click and place your base view. Right-click on your view from the shortcut menu and select Retrieve Dimensions. You will see the Retrieve Dimensions dialog box, as shown in Figure 2. Click the “Select View“ button, then select the view for which you want to retrieve the Dimensions. Use the cursor to highlight from right to left the geometry you want to dimension, then click on the “Select Dimensions” button, and again with the cursor, select all the geometry and dimensions, from right to left. Then click the “OK” button if you’ve finished selecting. The dimensions will be displayed as they were when you designed the part. I have the dimensions from my part design geometry in Figure 3. In this part, it is fairly easy to adjust the dimensions so they look like what is needed for manufacturing. After the part has been completely designed, delete all dimensions that do not meet manufacturing requirements and place new dimensions that do meet manufacturing requirements. Figure 4 is my revised sketch with dimensions set up for manufacturing, and Figure 5 is the finished drawing with dimensions for manufacturing. This is a fairw w w. A U G I . c o m Figure 1: Basic part design Figure 2: Retrieve Dimensions dialog Figure 3: Dimensions from part design geometry http://www.augi.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AUGIWorld Magazine - May/June 2008

AUGIWorld Magazine - May/June 2008 Table of Contents The CAD Manager From Drawing to Display: The Value of Autodesk Impression Designing for Auto-Dimensioning The Proof Is in the Footing Managing Customization and Profiles Getting to Know the Display Manager What's Cooking at Autodesk Labs? On the Back Page

AUGIWorld Magazine - May/June 2008

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