2d Drawing, plan view

[jason]

I'm designing a robot that will be installed into a facitily. I want to make 2d plan drawing of the facility and bring it into the overall assembly. I'd like to be able to cut, paste, copy, pattern, align, constrain, and all the good stuff that you should be able to do in 2d drawing. What is the best way to do this in Inventor?

Also, I'd like to be able use inventor 2d in a way that is similar to blocks in acad?
EX: I have 20 I-beams in my facility. I want to draw one I-beam and have multiple instances in different locations.

[Anonymous]

You do not do the "good" stuff in the idw environment, you do it in the
part/assy environments. I would change my thoughts on how you want to
approach this, or it might be more work than you are after.

2 options that I see that are feasible

1) Create a 3D layout in IV, then simply print it off (this is how IV is
supposed to be used)
2) Export your robot to Autocad, and do it in there.

You could try sketching it in Iv, but I would sooner export it to
Autocad if you are going to go that route.

sagerobot wrote:
> I'm designing a robot that will be installed into a facitily. I want to make 2d plan drawing of the facility and bring it into the overall assembly. I'd like to be able to cut, paste, copy, pattern, align, constrain, and all the good stuff that you should be able to do in 2d drawing. What is the best way to do this in Inventor?
>
> Also, I'd like to be able use inventor 2d in a way that is similar to blocks in acad?
> EX: I have 20 I-beams in my facility. I want to draw one I-beam and have multiple instances in different locations.

[jason]

I did not intend to do the 2d drawing in the idw environment. That would be a complete waste of time. The facility should be drawn to scale and constrained to the robot.

I have heard of using part files with sketches and no 3d content. Then the part files can be copied and pasted and basically treated as just a sketch. The method is promising but there are some real hurdles.

I reallize that Inventor is designed to make 2d drawings out of 3d. If Inventor will only do limited 2d drawing, then this is (in my opinion, and others) a design flaw. We will ALWAYS need 2d drawing.

[Anonymous]

Sure you can make model sketches in the part environment. Just sketch
them how you want and then when you create your idw you can use the "Get
Model Sketches" tool to retrieve them.

sagerobot wrote:
> I did not intend to do the 2d drawing in the idw environment. That would be a complete waste of time. The facility should be drawn to scale and constrained to the robot.
>
> I have heard of using part files with sketches and no 3d content. Then the part files can be copied and pasted and basically treated as just a sketch. The method is promising but there are some real hurdles.
>
> I reallize that Inventor is designed to make 2d drawings out of 3d. If Inventor will only do limited 2d drawing, then this is (in my opinion, and others) a design flaw. We will ALWAYS need 2d drawing.

[Anonymous]

What you're speaking of is probably the correct approach: use a sketch-only
part file. You can constrain your robot to the 2D sketch data in the
context of an assembly.

This is CLOSE to skeletal modeling, but not quite. If you do a search on
skeletal modeling, you might find some good tips.

"The method is promising but there are some real hurdles."
Can you be more specific?

--
Andrew Faix
Product Designer - Inventor Drawing Manager
Autodesk
wrote in message news:5220276@discussion.autodesk.com...
I did not intend to do the 2d drawing in the idw environment. That would be
a complete waste of time. The facility should be drawn to scale and
constrained to the robot.

I have heard of using part files with sketches and no 3d content. Then the
part files can be copied and pasted and basically treated as just a sketch.
The method is promising but there are some real hurdles.

I reallize that Inventor is designed to make 2d drawings out of 3d. If
Inventor will only do limited 2d drawing, then this is (in my opinion, and
others) a design flaw. We will ALWAYS need 2d drawing.

[Anonymous]

> I'm designing a robot that will be installed into a facitily.

This can be done with IV. Look here for examples:

http://www.sdotson.com/viewparts.php?cat=robots


>I want to make 2d plan drawing of the facility and bring it into the overall assembly.

You can do this. You would place a sketch on the XZ plane of a part and draw your plan.


>I'd like to be able to cut, paste, copy, pattern, align, constrain, and all the good stuff that you should be able to do in 2d drawing. What is the best way to do this in Inventor?

The best way is to do it in 3D 😉 Inventor is a 3D modelling package, you design in 3D. Drawing views are produced from models.

>Also, I'd like to be able use inventor 2d in a way that is similar to blocks in acad? EX: I have 20 I-beams in my facility. I want to draw one I-beam and have multiple instances in different locations.

This is possible. Make a sketch in a part and reuse your part.

>The facility should be drawn to scale and constrained to the robot.

Hmm, actually I would think the work station (i.e. facility) should be drawn and the robot constrained to it.


>If Inventor will only do limited 2d drawing, then this is (in my opinion, and others) a design flaw. We will ALWAYS need 2d drawing.

Inventor does a wonderful job of generating 2D views from 3D models. This is the single most time saving feature of Inventor, you can update N views by editing 1 model.


Inventor has an Overlay view feature that allows you to define different positional representations of your robot and place multiple 2D views on top of each other to show "important" positions (e.g. extreme jointspace conditions and the zero joint vector).


You will have very good results designing your robot in Inventor, but you must do it the IV way (which is really just the 3D parametric way w/ a nice looking GUI).

[Anonymous]

I do my 2-d reference floorplans in Autocad, then import into Inventor (don't auto-constrain the endpoints!) . I can lay out a room five times faster in Acad (with block and layer tools), and 3-d adds no value to the floorplan.

-Paul Cunningham

[jason]

>"The method is promising but there are some real hurdles."
Can you be more specific?

One hurdle is constraining two sketches together. You can't constrain to sketch items. You have to create reference geometry to constrain the sketch parts where you like.

I've only started with this approach. I haven't really scoped out all the pros and cons yet.

[jason]

I couldn't agree more. And I think you give a great example of why, if AutoDesk expects real people to do real life projects completely in Inventor, the 2d stuff needs work.

[Anonymous]

I see, but one way to solve that problem is through additional part files.
Rather than trying to project sketch entities and tying everything together
in the context of a part file, create multiple part files and constrain them
together in an assembly (just thinking out loud).

--
Andrew Faix
Product Designer - Inventor Drawing Manager
Autodesk
wrote in message news:5220392@discussion.autodesk.com...
>"The method is promising but there are some real hurdles."
Can you be more specific?

One hurdle is constraining two sketches together. You can't constrain to
sketch items. You have to create reference geometry to constrain the sketch
parts where you like.

I've only started with this approach. I haven't really scoped out all the
pros and cons yet.

[m4kert]

I've also hit a wall in trying to keep the number of programs needed to read a drawing as small and simple as possible. Just finishing up a conveyor assembly system design for an automotive plant. The mechanical assembly (details and such) are completed within the Inventor environment. Now my next task is to create the pneumatic diagrams for each station. I've brought in my 'blocks' and have created symbols to use, however I can't align the symbols, and placing dim's on each 'sketch' is counter-productive. Why would I need to go back to Mechanical to create a '2D' schematic? Why can't Inventor use the '2D' drawing space like Mechanical? Not everything in engineering is '3D'. Sometimes a simple '2D' drawing is all that is required. I spent a day on this so far, with nothing to show for my time, yet in Mechanical I'd be done for the day.

[jason]

Actually, I mean to do exactly as you are suggesting. In fact I have just completed such a drawing. To give you an idea of what I did here is an outline of the total sketch with some description:

Facility.aim //total sketch
- I beam:1 .prt //one beam of my facility
- I beam:2 .prt //one beam of my facility
- I beam:3 .prt //one beam of my facility
- Layout:1 .prt //contains reference goemetry to position beams
- Drawing:1 .prt //contains all other center lines, text, etc that describe the building.

I'm sure there must be a better way to do this but this structure worked for me this time.