Is Inventor suitable for large machinery design

[Ronnie_m]

I have recently been evaluating Inventor 5.3 and 6 managed to build one of our smaller sub assemblies fairly quicklyby importing the Autocad files(30 manufactured parts). Whilst Inventor handled this with no problem I would like some feedback regarding Inventor and large assemblies.

I am hoping to design complete machines using Inventor ranging from rotary indexing assembly machines(4000-5000 parts) to larger indexing conveyor based assembly machines(10000-15000+ parts)both are used for the assembly of small plastic components(razors,syringes,consumer products etc)

The larger machines can contain up to 200 sub assemblies and I am looking to use Cyco teamworks to manage the files.

Can anyone provide some insight into Inventors capabilities for large assemblies and also the interface with teamworks.
Is it really possible to work top down on this size of assembly?
Is it possible to route cables etc in the top level assembly?
Most of the mechanisms are cam driven can anyone recommend an add on module for cam design for Inventor.

Thanks in advance

Ronnie M

[joemang]

for CAM DESIGN check out http://www.delta-eng.com/
not an add in for Inventor but has export capability
for import to Inventor
Joe

[Anonymous]

cant answer your questions on the large assys but
checkout edgecam

href="http://www.edgecam.com/uk/product/inventor.shtml">http://www.edgecam.com/uk/product/inventor....

Matt

[Anonymous]

Sadly enough, I believe Inventor still lacks some decent assembly configuration utilities (manually controlled simplified rep. of assys) to really work good on large assys.

I have had some major trouble with our large machines.

We usually have big projects where we make a production line with several machines. To check interface between these machines, it would be very interesting to put all the machines into the same assy (plant layout), to check the interfaces.
Today this is impossible.
We can hide /disable parts assys. This is very cumbersome, since design views dont "bubble up", but has to be defined in the top assy.
And IV still loads the hidden/disabled files anyway, so there is not much gain anyway.

We can put maybe half the plant in the layout assy before
IV/Windows gets too slow and unstable.
As I understand it, we are reaching the Windows limits, so using even more ram wont help much.

But the real culprit is the drawings.
On some of our biggest "single" machines, I can not even complete all the views on the drawing before IV gobbles up too much memory and crashes.

So what we have too do, is to make dwg's of the machines and try to make an old-fashioned layout in acad.
Of cource there is no updating link to the models, so as the machines evolve, the dwg doesnt. The result is errors in the interface between the machines, resulting in expensive modifications.

So big assy handling is my biggest consern/wish in IV at the moment. (acually it has been since R2).
I was dissapointed when R6 did not adress ANY of these issues, but I really hope for R7. They (the Inventor team) can't wait much longer, if they are to keep up with the competition.

I maybe sound as a dissapointed user now, but mostly I'm real happy with IV. There are always some things that needs fixing in such a program, and this is my big gripe. (that and true assy mirroring without derived parts).

Gary Smith, I would be extremely happy if you could give us some hints about when solutions to this may be implemented.
I would REALLY like to hear "R7 !"

Jorgen Bjornes

[Anonymous]

We are designing custom made machinery, our largest
assembly so far counts up to 7000 parts. We did this in MDT, but out of interest
converted this into IV6 and I did some comparison MDT-IV with respects to large
assembly performance.

The results show that IV is up to 10 times
slower than MDT. While in IV we almost reached the point of not being able to
work any longer with the beast due to excessive delay for commands, hardware
limits of our best workstation, and maybe even OS limitation, the same work was
still fun in MDT.

If you are interested, you may search for a thread
named "working a huge assembly", the results of my tests should still be posted
in CF under same topic.

Regards,
--
Leo Laimer
Maschinen- und
Fertigungstechnik
A-4820 Bad Ischl - Austria

[Anonymous]

Hi.....We manufacture textile machinery and have some very, very large assemblies...........I'd love to produce an assembly of a complete machine, and work from the top down, but it is impossible at the moment. Off the top of my head, our machine would have in excess of 150,000 components. In order to model it we have to really reduce the number of instances of repeating components - by placing a few parts at key places to check for clashes. Using this technique out model is still really large (20,000), and is very frustrating/slow to work with at the top level.............

To produce cams we use visual Nastran 4d (Motion and FEA) in conjuntion with a German cam package called Indu drive.
Indu drive is a really neat piece of work - It's just a shame that it has to work with Nstran 4d, which is complicated and clever 'real world' simulator, but is also the buggiest piece of software I have ever used............. You can produce really complicated cams and motions using both packages, but it is a real sruggle, even when you have learnt Nastran's little perculularities.........Cheers...........Sean

[Anonymous]

Surely by now everyone here must be aware that I
can not provide "hints" of when you will see new functionality!

We are keenly aware of the importance of ever
larger assemblies. It is interesting that as systems become more and more
powerful, we (as in the "collective" we) all seem to forget how painful working
with "small" assemblies were just a few years ago 😉

Hopefully you will see some enhancements in R7 that
will help ease working with really large assemblies.

G

[Anonymous]

Ok, I guess I was pushing a little.

Yeah, I guess you shouldn't give hints all the time either.
If you "promise" some functionality, and it doesnt turn stable enough to release by the time of a new release, the customers gets rather dissapointed.

I should have known and respected that, sorry.

But I really hope you guys have something special up your sleeve, because I feel this is the single most important thing missing in IV. And we need only look at the competition to see more or less successful attempts on this functionality.
I also saw this before choosing IV for my company back in R2, but I was confident that IV would catch up and bypass the others. For the most part, this has happened. Hopefully this will happen soon in large assy handling as well.

Keep up the good work, and I promise I wont try to force hints out of you for a while 😉

Jorgen

[Anonymous]

I can't wait!!!!! So when is R7 going to ship
;>)???

gcooper

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">

"Gary R Smith (Autodesk)" <
href="mailto:gary.r.smith@autodesk.com">gary.r.smith@autodesk.com>
wrote in message
href="news:D746F8FF06F881D56F4B3765649C0552@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb">news:D746F8FF06F881D56F4B3765649......

Surely by now everyone here must be aware that I
can not provide "hints" of when you will see new functionality!

We are keenly aware of the importance of ever
larger assemblies. It is interesting that as systems become more and more
powerful, we (as in the "collective" we) all seem to forget how painful
working with "small" assemblies were just a few years ago 😉

Hopefully you will see some enhancements in R7
that will help ease working with really large assemblies.

G

[Anonymous]

The problem with saying
anything here is what ends up getting read in between
the lines. This is one of the main reasons why there isn't more Autodesk
participation in this forum.

I carefully said:  "...some enhancements..."

and I suspect that will end up being construed
to:

"Gary promised that the
whole large assembly problem would be solved in R7"

Not even close!

G

[Anonymous]

Darn, I already reported this to tenlinks and mcadcafe. It will be in the press tomorrow. Sorry about that Gary.

Rich Thomas

[gnrnr]

LOL

[Anonymous]

I thought you said something about voice
recognition and holographic projector support and that adesk is going to buy out
PE and SW and that there will only be one mid-range tool next year
"ProInventorWorks"? That's what I  told tenlinks was coming in R7 and that
a "Spaceball" will be included with the software and all other means of
manipulating the model or assembly will be discontinued. Did I miss
anything?

Thanks for participating Gary we'll try not to
start too many vicious rumors.

gcooper

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">

"Gary R Smith (Autodesk)" <
href="mailto:gary.r.smith@autodesk.com">gary.r.smith@autodesk.com>
wrote in message
href="news:CC1689E5D69CA0CDBAC7D4727D11BCAB@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb">news:CC1689E5D69CA0CDBAC7D4727D1......

The problem with saying
anything here is what ends up getting read in
between the lines. This is one of the main reasons why there isn't more
Autodesk participation in this forum.

I carefully said:  "...some enhancements..."

and I suspect that will end up being construed
to:

"Gary promised that the
whole large assembly problem would be solved in R7"

Not even close!

G

[Anonymous]

>Hopefully you will see
some enhancements in R7 that will help ease working with really large
assemblies<

Thank you!!!!!!

--
Leo Laimer
Maschinen- und
Fertigungstechnik
A-4820 Bad Ischl - Austria

[Anonymous]

Gary,

While you are on this - are you aware of the
comparison MDT - IV with respects of huge assembly performance I did some time
ago? The thread was called "working a huge assembly"

Regards,
--
Leo Laimer
Maschinen- und
Fertigungstechnik
A-4820 Bad Ischl - Austria