Automate the creation of drawings of simple parts

[Anonymous]

Customer request:
Automate the creation of drawings of simple parts:
- Automaticly creation of dimensions
- Automatic counting lengths of outer and inner profiles
- Painted surfaces - counting the total surface of the external surfaces

our comment:
Time consuming - for simple type of drawings (repeated) (profiles, burnout) - views, basic dimensions, etc.
Objective - to recognize or choose to create a drawing or predefined drawing.
Function for calculating overall length for external and internal edges plus automatic filling to title block.
Dtto measuring surfaces for painting - and fill in the title block (count only the outer surface).

[Anonymous]

What sort of 'simple parts' are you thinking of? I would suggest that if you have parts that you regularly create that customised templates are a better option.

iProperties returns an 'Area' value, would this not be the value you are looking for with your painted surfaces?

[pavel.slovacek]

Automatic dimensions is a good idea! I hope that will be in next version.

[petr_fischer]

Great improvements of productivity!

[tmoney2007]

From a company that has had a tool in AutoCAD for automatic dimensions, I don't support this.  It leads to lots of drawings with dimensions that don't mean anything in particular.  If you aren't going to actually put effort into the dimensioning, they might as well not be there.  "Dimensioning all geometry is required, so I'm going to put a dimension on each piece of geometry" is poor practice.

Dimensioning is something that actually takes human interaction.  The way that geometry is created on a drawing defines which dimensions are critical.  Dimensioning all the holes in a hole pattern relative to the edges doesn't mean the same thing as dimensioning the holes in the pattern relative to eachother, then dimensioning the center of the pattern.

If this feature is added, it needs to be able to be disabled on an administrative level.

[cadman777]

I agree with tmoney, but I also disagree.

For every simple part, there can be a simple DETAIL drawing with various views.

For every flat pattern, there can be a simple FLAT PATTERN drawing view.

That would save an untold amount of time and effort when doing HANDRAIL, PLATFORMS, LADDERS, GRATING, etc. It would also save tons of time when detailing STRUCTURAL PARTS, such as angles, channels and beams.

Does anybody have any CODE that does that for Inventor?

I have not found any add-ons for it.

If there's one thing I would like to get my hands on it's code that finds all sheetmetal parts in a directory or in a top-level assembly, and puts them on ONE SHEET in an idw file, with OAL and OAW dims on each view, as well as the pertinent information in each views' LABEL (such as material, thickness, total quantity, etc.) I'm sure this is DO-ABLE, but I do not have the skill to do it.

Anybody out there know anything about this?