Inventor to Mechanical Issue

[maschilke20]

HELP Please!! 

The company that I am working for wants to use Inventor to model parts but create the drawings in AutoCAD Mechanical. Is there a way to create one assembly of the same parts but in two or three different configurations, so that we can show a pre-weld condition, a post-weld condition and a final machined condition, but have those three different conditions show up in AutoCAD Mechanical as we need them to?

Or do we just have to make separate assembly files for each of those conditions?

Thanks

[mdavis22569]

you can't do Inventor dwgs ... and open it then in Mechanical?

[maschilke20]

I can create an AutoCAD Mechanical drawing and create a base view using the Inventor assembly file as the model but I want to be able to show the model in AutoCAD in multiple conditions.

[mdavis22569]

right ... but can you instead do the idw in Inventor as a Inventor DWG ..which then should let you do it

[maschilke20]

I can't do that for this company due to tracking issues. All drawings need to be created in AutoCAD Mechanical.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Hi maschilke20,

So it sounds like your company is employing the Inventor Link tools as shown in this video:

If this is the case, then I'm fairly certain that one of the limitations of that workflow, is that assembly features (including weldment features) are not recognized by AutoCAD Mechanical. So I think you are out of luck for this. But I would encourage you to confirm that this is the case, as it's been a long time since I've used the Inventor Link tools.

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad-mechanical/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015...

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[mdavis22569]

what he was saying about ..... you're limited ...

[maschilke20]

That is exactly what I am trying to do. The video shows the ability to select from multiple Positional Representations, yet when I try it, I only have the option to select the Master Positional Representation.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Hi maschilke20,

So a Positional Representation is set up in the assembly file to show the parts in different positions, most often achieved by Constraint value overrides.

Are you saying that you have created Positional Representations in your assembly, but they are not showing up when you go to AutoCAD Mechanical? If so that's not expected. But I'm not sure Positional Representations are what you want.

So just to clarify, if you're intention is to show a weldment in the preparation stage, weld stage, and machining stage, then Positional Representations are not the correct tool for that.

Inventor has tools in its drawing environment that allow you to create views showing the weldment in each of its stages. If that is the goal, I would encourage you to create the drawing views in an Inventor DWG (not an AutoCAD DWG) and then save that file, and open it in AutoCAD Mechanical and detail it there.

Keep in mind that when you access an Inventor DWG file in AutoCAD, everything that was created in Inventor is protected from the AutoCAD user, so they can't destroy it. But they can add to it, etc. It's really very much like the Inventor Link tools, but you're creating the views in Inventor, rather than AutoCAD.

Here's a link that shows how Inventor weldment views are created (just ignore all of the frame generator stuff if that doesn't apply to your situation):

http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com/2011/03/detailing-frame-generator-weldment.html

Here's a link to a helpful PDF written by Thom Tremblay on the subject of workflows involving Inventor DWG files used in AutoCAD (aka True Connect):

Autodesk® Inventor™ and DWG TrueConnect: A Perfect Combination - MA215-2P-1.pdf

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[maschilke20]

Thank you Curtis, I will definitely look at those resources that you provided. I was looking into the weldment files to produce the desired results but like I said before, this company is adamant about the drawings have to be done with a "company-approved" and "industry-mandated" AutoCAD titleblock for tracking purposes. I am trying to figure out how that can happen.

I will let you know if I make any headway.

[Ray_Feiler]

Just because you make to views in an Inventor DWG doesn't mean you can't latter add a title block in AutoCAD.

[maschilke20]

Thanks Ray. I was thinking about doing that. I would just need to know where the limits of my titleblock was so that I didn't create any Inventor content that would fall right on top of the titleblock, revision block, BOM, etc. 

[Ray_Feiler]

Setup a template in Inventor with a border and no title block.