Inventor - How to create a pocket hole

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I am basically new to inventor and I would like to get any tips from this forum on how to go about creating a pocket hole like the Kreg Jig. I am a woodworker so this would come in very handy when I am building furniture sketches.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Welcome to the forum.

I think the easyest way to do it, would be to creat a plane at the angle you want and make the extrude cut on a sketch you draw up on the plane.

This way you would basicly be working in inventor the same way as you work with the wood and tools in real life.

This is ussurly a good way to make sure that your designs can be done in reality.

[JDMather]

If you have trouble figuring it out - attach your attempt here.

[Curtis_Waguespack · Accepted solution]

Hi djcali, 

Here's a quick step by step for one method (there are several other ways to do this as well).

First create a sketch down the center of the work piece, using an existing origin plane (or by creating your own work plane). Create a line at the correct and angle coming off the center of the work piece, and use a dimension to set the line length. I've dimensioned the line length at 2" but, as long as it goes out past the intersection of the face of the work piece by a bit, the length doesn't really matter.

Next create a work plane on the end of the end of the line by selecting the end point and then the line.

Then create a sketch on this work plane and use the Project Geometry tool to project the line end point into the sketch. You can then either toggle the projected point to be a center point cross, or place a center point cross onto the projected point.

And then finally use the Hole tool to create a hole that goes through all, using the sketch point as the placement.

 

Attached is an example file as well.

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

[JDMather]

or (see attached)

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I wanted to thank you all for your replies! I will check out the examples when I get back to the shop. I'm so hooked on this program! So as far as reusing this pocket hole once I design it, how is it saved and called back up when I, let's say create a new piece of wood?

[JDMather]

You will want to investigate iFeatures.

[Anonymous]

@JDMather Thanks, I'll check into iFeatures

[JDMather]

First I recommend you become familiar with doing it the hard way.
iFeatures is an advanced topic.

You might start here  http://home.pct.edu/~jmather/skillsusa%20university.pdf

and then post some examples when you run into trouble or want to see if there might be a better technique.

[PaulMunford]

Great to see another woodworker taking up Inventor!

Here are a couple of posts on iFeatres that you might find useful.

http://cadsetterout.com/inventor-tutorials/ifeatures-primer/

http://cadsetterout.com/inventor-tutorials/what-every-drafter-needs-to-know-about-ifeatures/

[Anonymous]

Thanks Paul, great tutorials. That really shed light on iFeatures. So I played around with the examples posted above and I know now what I need to do. I wanted to take curtis' example above and create a iFeature and I almost got it right, I got the hole and angle to save in the iFeature but I can't seem to get the Oval sketch to save too. I just need to really study some more tutorials. I'll post the iFeature I created later. I'm sorry if I'm not making a hole lot of sense right now but I'll learn!

Thanks

[PaulMunford]

If you have any problems, post the files here so we can take a look at it.

Cheers,

Paul

[Anonymous]

I made an Ifeature for a pocket hole. It may not be 100% accurate, but it seems to work well enough. sometimes it needs to be oriented 180 degrees to the reference line.