Search for sheetmetal parts in autodesk inventor

[Anonymous]

HI all, I am trying to search for all sheemetal parts inside an assembly, of a specific thickness. Using the results, I want to create a Level of Detail, and export the flat patterns of these parts as DXF (or what ever). How can I do that? The settings are described in the attached images. Thank you in advance, -- INSULA ELECTRIC LTD Nikolaos Th. Kaminakis Mechanical Design Engineer nkam@insulaelectric.com Small Industries & Handicrafts Park (VIO.PA) Souda, Chania, Crete, Greece, GR73200 --

[Mark.Lancaster]

@Anonymous

Welcome to the community...

Nothing is attached for us to review...

[Anonymous]

Sorry,

here it is.

[mdavis22569 · Accepted solution]

I think you're asking a lot of the software to combine that many task ..

I can think of 2 ways: 

1) Ilogic

2) Task Scheduler 

Not sure why the level of detail .. but I can kind of see it ..

You'll probably need to set up a custom iproperty that would populate the thicknesses.   You could have Ilogic look at the assembly for it.. and maybe create something like an LOD, but that again is asking a lot and could fail, and you won't know if you have everything unless you manually check/verify it.

Are you using a PLM or Vault?

Mike

[Anonymous]

Dear Michael,

Thank you very much for your swift response.

I don't want to do all the steps at once. That would be nice, but this is not my intention.

For the time being, I want to do it manually as follows:

1st task: search for the sheetmetal parts, for example, copper busbars of 10mm thickness (see attached images)

2nd task: select all the parts, and put them inside a "Level of Detail". 

2.1 task: if LoD is not created yet, I can create one copy of the master LoD, and call it for example: "Coppers Only".

2.2 task: search and select all the parts with thickness of 10mm and assign them to LoD: Coppers Only

if 2.2 task is not possible, I can activate the LoD: Coppers Only (as a copy of the Master)

i) then search for the parts with thickness of 10mm (that means all the copper busbars)

ii) select them all,

iii) Invert selection, using the inventor selection tools.

iv) suppress the parts selected to the previous step, and then I have a LoD with all coppers.

(see attaches images)

Same thought about parts from galvanised steel of 2.0mm thickness. Some of my assemblies have lots of them: inside the main assembly, and inside in subassemblies.

I dont mind do that whole procedure manully. I just want to be able to search for all the sheetmetal parts of a specific thickness ( and/or later of a specific material).

BTW: the Thickness parameter already exists inside a sheetmetal part. I cannot think why I should create an extra iproperty parameter to copy "Thickness".

Is there any workaround??

Thank you in advance.

-nk/.

[SašoPrijatelj]

A little selfpromotion... we have developed an addin that does most of this:

http://www.basic.si/index.php?p=autodxf-en

There is also a video on that page showing how it works but it's in slovenian.

[Anonymous]

Dear Saso,

Nice plugin, but this is not what we want to implement. I just want to find all the sheetmetal parts inside an assembly with a specific thickness.

Where Inventor is able to help me?

1.  It assigns a parameter inside the sheetmetal part. The most crucial one, the "Thickness"
2.  In the search tool I can search for
   1. the inventor parts (*.ipt)
   2. only the sheetmetal parts
   3. I can fill a parameter "Thickness" with "equals" to a value, in order to find the sheetmetal parts that I am interesting to.

I mean, we have them all: search tool + refinement tool+parameters.

And that does not work.

Once I find the sheetmetal parts, there is a way to put them inside a Level Of Detail. Later I want to use this LoD in order either to export the DXF's only, or to export special NC files for our CAM software. An on top of that, UPDATE all the NC's of the sheetmetal parts of a "specific" thickness, that need updates. This is the whole idea: Search for parts with a specific attribute.

Best regards,

[SašoPrijatelj]

Hello.

Find tool as far as I know cannot directly search for parameters but can search for custom iProperties. So to make the Find tool work the way you are trying to, you'll have to add your Thickness parameter to a custom property. This can be achieved by exporting parameter in parameter dialog. See screencast at the bottom of this post (it's an example from German Inventor so the parameter is named Objekthohe instead of Thickness).

You could also predefine this in your Sheet metal template so the Thickness would automatically appear as custom iProperty.

Regarding our AutoDXF tool: It can already sort and export sheet metal parts by thickness. If you would find it useful we can add an additional command to automatically create LODs based on Thikcness. Let me know if that would be useful for you.

[Anonymous]

Dear Michael,

I created a custom "iproperty" as "Thickness", set the type as number, and set the value "2", in a couple of parts

I used the search tool (see attached image) and the I found these parts. Yeap ... it worked...

But this workaround is painful. Now, I have to create this "iproperty" in each and every sheetmetal part. And I have to keep an eye on

this,  in case, some day I change my mind and change the thickness of the part.

Or I should create a "iproperty" inside the default template part for sheetmetal.

Isn't there any option to search for parameters of a part and not for "custom iproperty"???

btw: I'm not using Vault or any PLM.

best regards,