We make Steel poles and structures for electrical utility transmission liines. We have been tryng to learn Inventor for a while now and have found that the modeling is fairly simple. Our problem is figuring out how to extract data into the proper format that we need. I have attached a screen shot of a hole table that someone has made here.
1. The first thing everyone noticed is the linear call our 13'-1/8", in the XDIM column, We need it to show the leading zero in front of the fraction so that it read 13'-0 1/8".
2. The "Hole Diameter" column should not read 11/2, it shoudl read 1 1/2. What's up with that?
3. We can't figure out why the callouts in the YDIM column are in decimal and are not at least showing up like the data in the XDIM column.
I have looked through the styles and I am by no means an expert but it seems to me that when you change the style for "Table" it may or may not have an effect depending on how things are set in the "Hole Table" style. I really need some help here. Maybe someone could tell me a book or someplace that I can go that actually does understand these tables and units and data and getting them all to work together. I have felt like this program was going to be key in our entry into the 3D environment but now we're not so sure.
HELP!!
Have you looked at how the columns are set up in your Hole Chart style? It is possible to set each column to different unit types (fractions vs decimal etc), as well as the precision. On your Hole Dia column I suspect if you play around with the fractional stacked vs unstacked, you might see a difference. I have no idea on how to get the leading zeros in this particular case.
Chris Benner
Inventor Tube & Pipe, Vault Professional
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The column formatting is sort of hidden in the style manager.. (not sort of.. it is hidden) 🙂 or not intuitive enough anyways.
When you get to the hole table section down in the "default column settings" you right mouse click on the property column and select "format column"
@Blair wrote:
I don't think you can get to the Suppress Zero function within the Format Table Function. This would be pointed back to the Dims Style Manager
yeah.. sorry my responsed was intended to help him with his #3 question...
Thanks everyone for the comments and answers however, they still didn't give us what we need. I wouldn't have thought this would have been a big deal since it's been in AutoCAD for years and has been an Architectural dimensioning standard for decades. I will try to be clearer as to what I'm talking about. I have an object that is 12 1/8" long. Industry standard would be to dmension it to 1'-0 1/8", not 1'-1/8". To dimension like this, 1'-1/8", would cost countless amounts of money in manufacturing mistakes because of misread dimensions. I'm working in Inventor 2014 and imagine my surprise that it apparently is not able to do this.
I watched a youtube video highlighting some of the new features in 2011. One of them was "leading zeros". In the video, the dimension in question was 1/2". By adding the leading zero it showed the dimension as 0'-1/2". This is not correct and I know that I am not the first one to encounter this. I'm hoping that someone out there has already solved this and I'm just completely missing it. If so, please share. If not then this should probably go to the Inventor developers and programers. If this is the case then you guys at Autodesk seem to have dropped the ball on this. Either way you sure need to make it a point of explaining this better in the help files.
I'm also having trouble with styles. My question is whether or not it is possible to make different style and have them be associate with only certain objects? With tables, I am aware that I can go to each column and set them to separate units but I get confused when a change in the Dimension style or maybe the Hole Table style affects everything else.
I am a relatively new guy in Inventor but I am not a new guy in the CAD world. I have used AutoCAD since the old days when you had to have 2 floppy drives, one for your drawing and one for the program and you had to swap out between 4 different floppies, depending on what you needed to do. I have used everything from Architectural Desktop and Civil 3D all the way to SDRC Ideas on a Unix system. All of this to say that I think I have a pretty good idea how 3D works and how CAD works. Inventor is a new animal and needs a different approach. I don't find the actual modeling to be all that difficult but there seems to be a pretty fair gap in some of the parts such as the above mentioned and how to use the data that is built into the model for manufacturing.
I know there will be some out there that have been using Inventor since it's beginning that will be wondering why I'm having all of these problems. I need your help on this. I love the Inventor software but the learning curve is pretty steep. We are trying to implement it into our business and I'm no where close to being ready to throw in the towel on this. So how about it folks?
I thought I would share this small discussion about more or less the same thing excpet from the other side.
@lctilley wrote:
I'm also having trouble with styles. My question is whether or not it is possible to make different style and have them be associate with only certain objects? With tables, I am aware that I can go to each column and set them to separate units but I get confused when a change in the Dimension style or maybe the Hole Table style affects everything else.
You can do this, using Object Defaults in the Styles Manager. This is true for object types, though not necessarily for individual objects. Certain things like dimensions, you can set the default using Object Defaults, and then ovveride them individually.
Chris Benner
Inventor Tube & Pipe, Vault Professional
Cad Tips Tricks & Workarounds | Twitter | LinkedIn
Autodesk University Classes:
Going With The Flow with Inventor Tube and Pipe | Increasing The Volume with Inventor Tube and Pipe | Power of the Autodesk Community | Getting to Know You | Inventor Styles & Standards |Managing Properties with Vault Professional | Vault Configuration | Vault - What is it & Why Do I Need It? | A Little Less Talk - Tube & Pipe Demo | Change Orders & Revisions - Vault, Inventor & AutoCAD | Authoring & Publishing Custom Content