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Archive for December, 2009

Inventor 2010 Service Pack 2

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Autodesk has release Service Pack 2 for Inventor 2010. This Service Pack comes in 4 flavors depending if you have the Subscription Bonus Pack installed or not.

Please follow this link to download the appropriate Service Pack for your installation.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=14275047&linkID=9242019

Thanks,

Thomas Fitzgerald

Posted in Manufacturing | No Comments »

Autodesk Inventor Publisher Technology Preview

Monday, December 14th, 2009

By, Dan Banach

If you or your company creates technical publication for parts book manuals, assembly instructions or operation instructions you will want to check out http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/inventor_publisher/ and download Autodesk® Inventor® Publisher Technology Preview (in the Manufacturing section).

Inventor Publisher allows you to fully leverage your Inventor data by importing 3D data from Inventor or a DWF file. The models cannot be edited in Inventor Publisher and no previous Autodesk Inventor experience is required. Once the data is imported you manipulate and annotate the design. Lastly you publish the data to programs such as Word, PowerPoint or create a movie file. Your documentation will always be up to date. If the original Inventor models change you can update the Inventor files in Inventor Publisher.

To learn more you can watch how to videos at: http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/inventor_publisher/getting_started/

Enjoy,

Dan

Posted in General, Manufacturing, Visualization | No Comments »

AutoCAD Skills for Civil 3D: Part 3

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

It’s that time again! Another installment of my who-know-how-many-part series. This time we’re talking about the use and wonders of the Properties palette in AutoCAD.

Have a great weekend!

10-autocad-skills-part-3

-Lou “Hot Grips” Holland

Posted in General | No Comments »

AutoCAD Skills for Civil 3D: Part 2

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

I’ve been putting together a series for brand-new users of AutoCAD who are getting ready to learn Civil 3D. You don’t need to know AutoCAD inside out, but understanding the basics is huge. This originally was a ten-part series but it has grown a bit.

Part 2 is ready! AutoCAD skills for Civil 3D: Part-2 Selecting things!

Part 1 is still available: AutoCAD skills for Civil 3D: Part 1 Getting to know the interface.

Coming soon: Part 3: AutoCAD Properties

Have fun!

-Lou

Posted in Civil, General | No Comments »

Inventor User Group Meeting of Milwaukee 12-10-09

Monday, December 7th, 2009

By, Dan banach

If you are in the Milwaukee area you are invited to our Inventor User Group meeting on Thursday 12/10/09 starting at 8:30 AM at the MasterGraphics Waukesha office http://www.mastergraphics.com/locations. Our meetings are free and everyone is encouraged to participate.

At this meeting we will be sharing “Inventor Tips”.

For those of you who wish to stay after the meeting we will be bringing in pizzas. For those of you who are interest in iLogic, the iLogic User Group meeting will start at 1:00 and will be covering “Best Practices”.

Posted in Manufacturing | No Comments »

ImageModeler and MatchMover

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

By Stephen Gabriel

The Autodesk subscription program has frequently been viewed as nothing but a way to get the latest version when it comes out, but for 3ds Max users, it is actually far more. In the last two years, we have seen significant software enhancements and additional tools available to subscription customers, such as CAT and the Connection Extension. Both of these added significant tools to our palettes.

This year, Autodesk subscription customers also gained access to ImageModeler and MatchMover. Each of these applications serves a specific function within the visualization process rather than adding a specific tool set into 3ds Max.

ImageModeler can best be thought of as a set creation tool. ImageModeler allows you to take a series of images of a location and build a 3D model be selecting common points within the images. The model accuracy is dependent upon the size of the images, the number of images and the number of points used to coordinate the images. This can help you create a 3D model that can be used as a setting for your visualization project, whether is it putting a building on the street or placing a product like a car in the environment. Because the model is 3D, you are no longer constrained to matching the camera position of the original image and can position it where it produces the most compelling shot.

MatchMover is a powerful utility that creates a camera from recorded video. MatchMover allows you to create tracking points that the software uses to determine the motion of the camera that was used to create video footage. The camera and it’s motion path can then be exported to 3ds Max to create the animation of your scene. The process is very quick and painless and you can even composite your model back into MatchMover to check the accuracy of the camera path. The result is a more precise camera match for animated shots.

Combined, these two tools represent a lot of value to visualization artists and they are free for download from the Autodesk subscription website for all subscription customers.

Posted in Building / AEC, Civil, General, Manufacturing, Visualization | No Comments »

AutoCAD Architecture – Detail Component Manager

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

By: Dwane Lindsey

Here’s another one of those features in AutoCAD Architecture that gets overlooked at times…the Detail Component Manager. With all the talk of transitioning to 3D, the 2D details often get left behind. This is one of those areas (of many) that AutoCAD Architecture excels at, even if you go to full 3D with the other AEC Objects. I even know of a few companies that have moved from AutoCAD to AutoCAD Architecture just because of the Detail Component Manager.

So what is the Detail Component Manager? Glad you asked! The Detail Component Manager (as shown below) is a database of 2D detail components.

The database is broken up into the 2004 CSI Divisions…except not all divisions are utilized out of the box. (Note: The 2009 version included two databases, one for the 2004 format and one for the 95 format. Versions 2008 and earlier included one database for the 95 format.) As you expand each division, you’ll narrow the search to the sub-divisions, and then the types of components. Once you select the component you’d like to use, you can then choose the “size” of the component.

Once you select the size, the fun begins. As in the following example for Roof Deck, all you have to do is pick 2 points and you now you have single polyline of roof deck! This is not individual blocks arrayed, so you can select the entire run and do what you want with it…and it’s not even a single “width” line, it has actual thickness!

As with all Detail Components (and AEC Objects), they insert on a layer automatically (and yes, this can be customized). And some components will have multiple layers if they are required. For example, a CMU block will come in on the A-Detl-Wide layer, but it will contain A-Detl-Medm and A-Detl-Patt for some of the lines and hatching inside the block.

Since I could go on and on and on and on about the Detail Components, I’ll wrap this one up. I’ve barely scratched the surface on using the Details within the database. There is so much more I could go into, like how the CMU will array blocks until you pick a second point, or how many different steel shapes are available…including steel joists (which can be inserted as a top view, side view or section view), but I’ll save that for a later time (maybe a demonstration??). As you can see, the Detail Component Manager in itself could make the initial move into AutoCAD Architecture quite easy…and all without ever going into the 3D realm.

Posted in Building / AEC, General | No Comments »