@Anonymous wrote:
Ok, so the extrusion "feature" is just listed as "body" in the tree - I right-clicked on everything (so I thought) and couldn't find anything that listed "adaptive" as an option. However in the quick simple assembly I just created, when I right clicked on "body" - it was there! I made it adaptive and then went back to the model. I can constrain *either* the work planes OR the faces and it seems to work properly!
As suggested, I should constrain based on the work planes. Logically, I would "gut instinct" constrain by the faces. Why is constraining by the work planes a better option?
Thank you all SOOOOOOO much for the help so far - it's little things like this that really get me with Inventor. I know that there will be hurdles to overcome after using SW for 20 years, and that I'll have to re-train my way of doing things. But it's none the less frustrating, lol! In my mind currently - there is a specific feature of the inserted content center part actually named "driven length" - so why the heck (excuse my language please) would that not be the feature that you would "drive"???? It's just not logical to me. Why even put that there? Just call the "body" something like "extrusion" so that it is easily understood? I can see now that the little icon next to it is the icon for an extrusion and I should have caught that. But Inventor sure makes you work for it!!
In searching for a bit more help - with the inserted content center part, is there any way to drive the B_L parameter from the main assembly parameters list? For instance if I were to make a user parameter that is an equation, can that value be translated to a content center part value? I can see where that could come in very useful. I can certainly drive the parameters of user-created extruded parts, but it doesn't seem like the content center parts parameters are available.
Again, thank you all for the help. I will still check into the frame generator - that looks pretty neat! I didn't even realize it was there, lol.
The Extrusion feature is defined as being between the Start and End planes, rather than being defined to extrude a certain distance. In my experience I had better luck using Adaptivity to move the planes, and then the Extrusion just follows along. When I did this in the past (it's been a while since I've needed to do this on something that wasn't already a Frame Generator project), there was some sort of trouble I had when I tried using the end faces. I don't remember exactly what it was (instability with updating, failing to update later on, just plain not working initially, etc.), but there was some sort of problem I ran into. If you got it to work, it may be fine - it's possible that what I experienced was a version-specific problem that no longer applies.
Like I mentioned before, the modeling for the CC structural parts is knowingly unusual. I don't think any user would ever intentionally build a part exactly that way. But that oddness has to do with the behind-the-scenes operation of Frame Generator. When you're using FG, you don't notice the strange setup, because it's operating in the background and you're controlling everything with your Layout part. The unfortunate side effect is that manual modeling with the CC structural shapes seems a little illogical.
Once placed, there is nothing inherently different about the CC part's parameters from any other part. Exactly what method are you referring to for "driving the parameters" from the assembly, that doesn't work on the CC parts?
Frame Generator is indeed a very powerful tool (with it's own quirks here and there, of course). I use it quite a bit, and highly recommend it.
Don't feel bad about the learning curve. It takes some time to get up to speed when you switch between any two systems. Most of us here would be just as lost if we were sitting down at SolidWorks - we'd probably be asking you for help instead.
