Inventor Studio - animating parameters

[CaseyVG]

I am modifying an animation that I did about a year ago. I had to add a few more parts. I need to animate the length, thus the animate parameters. I know how to go to parameter favorites and add them to the favorites so you can animate them. My problem is this: two of my parameters are not showing up when you click on parameter favorites. One of the new ones did. I have checked the export parameter box, and they are all different names. Can anyone give me any insight as to how to fix this? Any help would be much appreciated!

[Anonymous]

Hi Casey,
I'm going to describe a typical workflow for animating parameters. It may
not match yours, but it is what I've done before and has worked. I'm stating
it only so that people reading this will know the workflow. You've probably
already done all of these steps.

1. Create parameters in the part or assembly file.
2. In Inventor Studio, right click the part or assembly and click "Add to
Favorites".
3. Move the timeline slider to the time position where the parameter will
finish it's animation (aka key frame).
4. In the Animation Favorites folder, right click a parameter and click
"Animate Parameter."
5. Set the end value for the parameter.
6. I always click the "rewind" button to bring the animation to frame 0 and
then click the run button to see if things are working as expected. It's a
habit I cultivated long before Inventor Studio came around. If it doesn't
work, then I have to analyze why not and fix it.
7. Repeat steps 4-6 with the other parameters.

At step 4 two of your parameters are not showing. Are they located in a
part, subassembly, or the top level assembly?
How old is the dataset? What release was it first built in? (You mentioned
old vs new parameters.) How many parameters are involved - # old, # new. You
are animating length. Is the length of a part feature being animated? The
distance between parts? What do the parameters drive? I'll do what I can to
help figure this out.
--
Bill Bogan (Autodesk)

[CaseyVG]

Hi Bill,

Thank you for responding. My problem was at step 2. Although, I clicked on parameter favorites in inventor studio, and the part should have shown up there with the parameters listed. That's where I click on add to favorites. But my parts weren't even showing up there. I wasn't able to fix it, but I did find a work around. The parts that I created in the assembly (did create component), worked correctly when I went to inventor studio. The parts that I opened, changed the name, and then did place component were the ones that had the issues. Fortunately, I only added a few simple parts and I was able to create new components quickly. Once I did that, they showed up in the parameter favorites in inventor studio.

By the way, I am using Inventor 11. My animation is showing liquid flowing through a pipe, so I had to make a very short tube and then animate the length of it so it would look like it was flowing through the pipe.

Thanks for attempting to help.

[drspringer]

I had a similar issue but with using a Text parameter so I could change a number. I had to change it to a unitless (ul) numeric parameter with a precision of 0. Otherwise it wouldn't show up as a parameter favorite in Inventor 2014.