Millwork in Inventor

[cadman777]

Hey Guys,

I'm trying to find a painless way to do millwork in Inventor.

Anyone have any experience in this and can offer some good advice?
Thanks...

[Frederick_Law]

Depends on what you want to do and how far you want to push it.

I think there are wood work addin.

Some use frame gen for wood frame.

iFeature can be used for joints.

[cadman777]

Mostly I want to use it for making complicated scrollwork.

Example:

[Frederick_Law]

You want to roll steel bars into those shapes?

[cadman777]

Any kind of metal...

Aluminum on a burn table, steel flatbar, tubing, square bar, etc.

[Frederick_Law]

Splines and spirals.

Painless way is sub it out LOL

I think there are machine design to roll them.

"Scroll Machine"

Probably faster to make sample then model it in CAD.

[cadman777]

It's all custom small jobs.

So it needs to get done in Inventor.

AutoCAD sucks but it's a bit better than Inventor.

After all these years, no one has an add-on that does this?

[Frederick_Law]

You can start 😂

Model State, make them sizable.

I'll sub it out.  Find those fence, rail, gate companies.

They can finish the parts before you can finish drawing 🤣

I was in custom fab machine shop.  Customer building custom steel spiral staircase.

Our sale and customer had no idea what they got into.

Yea, just roll flat bar in a circle.

[cadman777]

I would like to, but there's just too many possibilities.

It's all customer driven, per 'customer preference'.

They keep changing their mind...has to match their dinner outfit or something like that.

Depends on the customer's mood I guess.

I use arcs mostly b/c they are the easiest to manage and shape.

Splines are too wonky and don't transition smoothly enough.

But each scrollwork part takes a lot of time! 

[Frederick_Law]

Thinking out load.

Use circles, arc to constrain spline and spiral.

Make it parametric.

[cadman777]

Already tried it.

Too bad there isn't a match equation I can use to do it.

I'd do it in Rhino3D if there was one.

[Frederick_Law · Accepted solution]

Looks like multiple arcs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnNo8FRwxFo

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-forum/how-to-draw-ironwork-swirl-in-autocad/td-p/6839906

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2g4t0Ukuk8

😵 Got dizzy watching that video @.@@

[89198826955]

everything is very simple

1.make templates 8-10 parts

2. combine into patterns

3.customer satisfied

[89198826955]

the same for stairs

[89198826955]

at the current time, everything is not quickly translated into IV

[cadman777]

Sometimes.

[cadman777]

Very nice!

Great idea!

But I'm using Inventor not AutoCAD.

What entity did you use to make those curves?

[89198826955]

arc is used

[89198826955]

[89198826955]

draw not long

hard to come up with a design