Looking for help dimensioning and showing decals in Inventor drawing sheet

[david.keating]

A number of parts that I have been working on include decals, labels and etched logos. I am having trouble getting these to show up properly in Inventor drawings. I already know about the following options, so please offer a different solution:

1. The view can be changed to "shaded", but this usually shows up with incredibly poor quality. It also doesn't allow for dimensions to be added that locate decal label position. Increasing the document dpi settings still gives poor results.
2. The decal image can *sometimes* be recreated as an engraving on the part. In this case it cannot because of gradients in the image.
3. The decal image can be added over the top of the view in the Inventor drawing. This means it doesn't conform to the curved shape of the part, and I haven't found a way to dimension images in Inventor drawings.

[mcgyvr]

Can you provide examples of your parts with decals and the exact issues you are having as far as the quality of shaded views?

Inventor is rather limited/basic in this area but by seeing your actual files we can potentially offer better suggestions or more specifically ways to potentially increase the quality..

Inventor shouldn't be the tool used to produce the artwork for the image.. Just basic placement and rendering.. A simple dimension for placement is certainly be possible.. 

If you need to see the full decal in your drawings then shaded is your only option..

[SBix26]

Inventor doesn't have the ability to turn an image into a line drawing.  Therefore, you're stuck with simply the outline of a decal; no detail, unless you use a shaded view.  You could use an overlay view with view representations to show just the decal as shaded, as long as you make it a separate part.  Better than nothing, but still not great.  The ideal would be for Inventor to provide tools to create a linework representation of a decal for line drawing views, but I doubt that will happen within the foreseeable future.

A more time-consuming alternative would be to use other tools (Photoshop? Illustrator?) to create the alternate linework representation of the decal, import that into Inventor and create a second decal feature that could be made visible for line views, invisible for shaded views.

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Sam B
Inventor Pro 2020.1.1 | Windows 7 SP1
LinkedIn

[david.keating]

I understand that Inventor is not meant for label decal creation, but I consistently run into issues getting files from programs such as adobe illustrator into our drawings and on our parts. It would be great if there was a more streamlined way to connect the work done on labels and the work done on the mechanical parts.

The purpose is for placement dimensions of the laser etched logo. Shading in the drawing can make it more difficult to see dimensions.

In the attached drawings, it does seem like the default Inventor sheet template is giving sharper rendering than our company sheet template.

[david.keating]

attachments...

[mcgyvr]

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@david.keating wrote:

I understand that Inventor is not meant for label decal creation, but I consistently run into issues getting files from programs such as adobe illustrator into our drawings and on our parts. It would be great if there was a more streamlined way to connect the work done on labels and the work done on the mechanical parts.

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There may be... Can you post something more troublesome than the pdf you just posted? That can easily be just an extruded sketch and you can fully dimension to that.. 

Give us a really hard/complex example of one of your projects... 

Is this gradient you speak of the tail ends of that "V" looking shape? 

Can you give us more details into the output you expect and for what purpose you need this high quality representations of the etchings/decals? Are you trying to feed this into a downstream process that requires high quality artwork? something else?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi David,

If you are not trying to create engineering drawings (mechanical) in drawing environment, you could use 3D Annotation in the part to annotate the geometry in 3D. Then take the screenshot of the graphics window. Would it work?

Many thanks!

[-niels-]

You can retrieve the sketch of your decal on the drawing, that would give you the outline of the image to dimension to.

Like so:

Include the desired sketch:

Then dimension to the frame (blue outline around the image in my screenshot):

Maybe that would be a solution?

[lena.talkhina]

Hello @david.keating  !

Great to see you here on Inventor Forum.

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