Inventor: Frame Designing and Analysis Workflow

CHRIS ATHERTON: So I'm in charge of the consulting within the UK business and the MFG sector. I've been using inventor for quite a long time now. My focus is, apart from Inventor, around iLogic and Vault and how we integrate all those and combine it work out-- get your workflows ultimate.

Prior to working at Symmetry, I worked for another company designing escalators, of all things-- a big global company. And that's one of the samples we're going to take a look at today, OK, because it's very pertinent to what we're doing.

SVEN ERIKSSON: Yeah, my name is Sven Eriksson. I'm sitting in Stockholm, Sweden, and I'm head of the simulation team of the company. I've been doing simulation most of my life, at least the last 25 years or so. So on almost anything, it can be safety to check that they are in the room is good to make a stress analysis of an aircraft or a simple frame analysis. So it can be almost anything. And that's what I've been doing for a long time.

CHRIS ATHERTON: Don't tell them it's too simple just yet.

SVEN ERIKSSON: But it's a good tool. You'll see. You'll see. Some of you went to my session this morning and I showed a bit about in [INAUDIBLE] as well. But more about me. Not so much more.

CHRIS ATHERTON: In this session, what we're going to do is we're going to take you through what frame design is within Inventor, how we use it, how it works. Try to go through a couple of tips and tricks so those of you that have used it in the past, you might see some bits you don't know about. We're going to look at actually analyzing it, going through different softwares that you can use for that, both inside Inventor and when you need to go beyond that. And then we'll go into a little bit how we can customize the content sensor and start documenting those frame designs as well. So hopefully there will be enough there for you.

So our customers are working in every sector I can imagine. And this is some examples of different frames that they've produced in Inventor. So it could be gantries going over a motorway. It could be a simple staircase, cable trays, or even this entire balcony. That's using frame generator in Inventor. So they're using it in very different ways.

The one thing they've all got in common, though, is that they have a need to design these frames and analyze them quickly. Those of you that are using Inventor already, which was the majority, and you aren't using frame generator, you're probably creating each member that you need one at a time. And if you need to change it, that is a lot of time wasted. So we're going to look at how we can adapt this quickly.

You can expand it a little bit into iLogic and tools like that as well. But, really, for most customers when they're designing frames, the tools that are there are good enough for them.

so they asked me to talk about what a frame was. As you roll in here, I'm guessing you know what a frame is because you need it for your jobs. So we can skip that. Inventor works on Content Center library, which hopefully you are all using. It's a library of millions of components, frame sections, to all sorts of industry standards. There's I-beams, channels, hex sections-- you can put your own section details in there as well.

And, as you know, Inventor allows us to do bolted connections, weld components together, and show things in various ways-- and structure the data in different ways as well. So that's really what we want to cover is how to do all this. The example we're going to use is mine from a past life-- Kone Escalators.

They're a Finnish company, worldwide. Some of their escalators are actually in this hotel. I checked them out. My wife doesn't like me doing that. She gets a bit bored out them, to be honest. But, anyway, you've got to have a hobby, don't you? But, anyway, I used to live and breathe these things. We used to design these not just for hotels and shopping malls-- it is shopping malls here, I think, in the states. Shopping centers, proper term.

But we used to design them for heavy use. And what I mean by that is airports, underground, those sort of environments. Typically a machine for a shopping center might be 20, 30,000 pounds. Again, proper unit, OK? These machines we were designing for the likes of London Underground will be going at two to three new Ps each. Two to three million pounds each. So they were really heavy duty machines.

There were some particular design challenges when loading these into Inventor and when actually designing in Inventor. Back when I was using this, these were million part models that we were loading on 32-bit machines. So we're using massive models back in the day when you couldn't really do that. The actual design challenges of these were quite considerable. Normally, a specification was that size. The specs for these machines were that size.

We had incredible sizes in these machines. Some of the biggest in London were 60 meters long. You think about all the passengers on that, all the loads on that. Just trying to fit it in a factory was complex enough. They were different angles put in at, they were manually surveyed. So sometimes it didn't quite fit and you had to adjust them. So it was a challenge. They're quite fast paced. We had to get passengers down to those trains as quick as we can so we can get the next load in. So we can't have any bottlenecks on them.

The top use one, certainly, in the underground-- 300 passengers a minute walking on those machines. That's a big vibration on that machine. Some going down one side, some static. That causes difference in wear, causes different loads across the machine as well, all of which has to be taken account of when you're designing your frame.

We have different maintenance loads so we have to be able to lift these machines. These machines are going into very tight spaces. They have to go over ticket barriers. So how do we do that? We've got four hours every night to get everything in before the passengers are back in again. So, again, design challenges there. And they're not small bits of kit. They are very, very heavy. 40 tones is a typical weight, not the largest.

Not only that-- the machines are going into place for maybe 40 years. They are retrofitted. So that truss-- although the machine's in for 40 years-- the actual truss, the frame, might be in for a lot longer than that. So it's good to be able to cope with an awful lot going on with it. And the loads-- I mean we're talking every day, 24 hours a day, they're in use by something or someone. This was the one I quote to my wife. It goes to the moon and back in their lifetime. It's a long way.

But it's not just the passengers that we have to think about when we're designing the frames. It's this sort of-- the ongoing changes to these structures throughout their life. So this machine has what we call attention carriage down at the bottom. And that's, basically, a carriage of linear rails. And as the chain stretches over its life-- and the chain's the bit that's driving the steps around-- that moves back based on some pretty hefty springs.

But if something gets trapped in the step band-- let's say a maintenance worker dropped a pole and it went through the step band and that the cone plate at the bottom that you step onto. That would stop the machine in a second. Where does all the energy go? Well that carriage shoots forward at the speed of a bullet. So how do you get a truss to be able to cope with that? How did you get it so it can take that load make it safe for any passengers on the machine? Because the last thing you want is some little old dear flying over. It does happen.

I talked about the installation time. You have four hours to get these in place. We had to make these machines bolt together. We have to manually carry these bits in over ticket barriers, down other escalators, down to the tunnels that you need. Or we have to pull it in on maintenance trains. You run the risk on that one of actually hitting a tunnel wall as it comes through in the train. That has happened as well. But there's a lot going on, a lot that you have to design into it.

So what else do we need to do when we're designing this? Because these are infrastructure projects, they're a big deal in London. They need every sort of analysis that you can do. They are very particular in what sort of calculations you do, what analysis you have to show, the test cases you have to show. And we were able to do all of this inside Inventor.

So this is the typical frame that we're looking at. We're going to take a look at this as an example and actually build up the example as we go. What we're going to do is design the top end of this-- the head end. We're going to look at adding loads to that to analyze it. And then we're going to look at how we can analyze those results and then make changes as we go on.

So there's lots that we can do. We can look at individual loads. We can look at distributions over individual beams. Again, we want to see how we do all this. So without further ado, let's take a look. I'm going to lose my voice, by the way. I only just got it back over the weekend, so apologies if it starts to go.

So here is Inventor. Hopefully you all know and love it by now. It doesn't crash too often so we're all good. You can see we've got a frame already up. What we're going to do in this example, we're going to look at how we design this top end of this machine using frame generator.

There's a lot going on. There's a lot of members that are connected in different ways. And this is where we're going to start. So frame generator, as I said, uses the content sensor. It's one of many design accelerators inside Inventor. Has anyone here actually used design accelerators yet? I'm aware this is the graveyard shift straight after lunch, so I'm going to have to wake you up somehow. We'll find out how. There will be questions on the test at the end.

So the design accelerates, you'll find them across the ribbon underneath design, can't miss them. There are accelerators for everything. The one I used to use quite a lot was bolted connection and the shaft generator. We have ones for configuring belts and gears, you name it there, really. They all allow you to do calculations, they all create geometry in various ways. And they all use something called the content center.

So those of you that haven't used it yet, the content center is a database of libraries. They can either be local on your desktop or hosted via your Vault server, which, in my opinion, is the best way of doing this. Hopefully you're all using Vault. The content center is split down into various categories of components. So we've got fixings, we've got components for tubing and piping, we've got frame and structural components. Within each of these categories, we've also got a whole load of design standards that we can pick from.

These are the ones that Autodesk give you. It does not restrict you to those. You can upload your own content. And it's advisable that you do. You want your part numbers, your descriptions on your parts list, on you building materials. Because that's the information that's going downstream. It's important to get that right.

Frame generator itself is limited to this [INAUDIBLE] that we've got here. It's a very simple tool. I can't believe none of you are using it yet. It's really that simple. So biggest button first. Typically with Autodesk, work left to right across the ribbon in every case. And that's what we're doing here. When you first go to insert a frame, it will come up with a dialog box. And this dialog box is really your key to what you're doing.

We have options on the right click, but the majority of what you're doing is going to be in this dialog box. So you'll get to know it quite well. This dialog box is split down just like the content center. So we have the standard that we're working to. You can see you can even create your own standards. I have a symmetry standard here and an unnamed one. It's that bad. But, generally, I work to ISO BSI standards. I can pick the standard I want. And within that content center, we get a list of all the different sections for that standard. Now a little tip for you-- when it opens up, it'll remember your last-- it'll either remember, the last section profiles that you opened, or it will remember-- or it will kind of go back to the default. Which, luckily for you guys from the states, is the ANSI standard.

If you already have existing members in your frame, one nice tip is that you can select that member and then click on your insert frame. And what does that do? That loads that member and those details-- things you want to add those in next time round. So if you don't want to be looking through all the time, find something similar, select it, and pull it through.

So if I select this one and insert frame, you can see that's changed to 160 rather than 300. Again, like everything I said, work left to right across the ribbon. We do the same in these dialog boxes. So what have we got? We've got the standard, the family, and the size within that family. Content center works off tables. Every family has a table against it, same as iPart for those of you that know what those are.

This is basically, just pick the size you want. Couldn't get any simpler. Pick the material. Pick the appearance you want. So I could go and say instead of yellow I want a galvanized finish on that. And it just saves you having to do that afterwards having everything in one screen.

Next, we want to look at the orientation. So how do we go about doing this? Well, I don't really know what orientation I want yet. I want to be able to see that visually. So what we're going to do is we're going to start selecting individual beams within my design. These beams that we're creating-- or we're selecting here-- can come from various different aspects.

So before I select them, let's have a look at those. I have, in this example, very simple part files in my assembly. Frame generator is based on skeletal modeling technique. I'm sure most of you've come across that term before. What that means is we're creating a kind of impression, for lack of a better word, of what we want. It can be solid parts. It can be just 2D sketches and a variety of those. Or it could be 3D sketches like we have in this example. We can use lines, arcs, blinds, whatever sort of shapes you need. And the frame generates will adjust to suit that.

You need to pull together this sort of-- generally, this sort of top level model so that we can use frame. If you have existing components in your design, you can pick edges of those components. You can pick between two points. You can pick entire sketches or individual lines. You name it. So it's very, very powerful because you can, basically, pick whatever you want. What you can't do is have nothing. You need something there to select.

Why is this powerful? Well, if you're using something like iLogic, I can drive the size of this, I can adjust dimensions and that will adjust the frame sections as we go through. So having that skeletal model really does help with that.

So let's go through and have a look. We're going to select the beam. We're going to say we're going to insert the frame-- default back to yellow, but that's fine. And then we're going to go through and start selecting beams. We can go through and just click. If you right click, you have different options. So we have one where we can select every line on a sketch. And at bottom, we can filter out various types of lines within that sketch, such as construction and center lines. Otherwise, it'll try and put a beam on those as well.

We can do chain select, which allows us to select chains. So you can see here-- well, hopefully, you can see. The colors aren't great on these projectors. But it's selecting along this edge and down because I've actually got two beams connected to each other. So we can try to put an individual piece that bends along that line if we wanted to.

Or the one that most people do is just multi-select. So what's multi-select do? I can just go through. I can select one beam, and it will start putting a preview on. Select a few more beams of where I want these designs to go. And we can see sort of in green there, the preview of what's going to happen.

Now, hopefully you can see that they're all at absolute rubbish angles. This beam's facing outwards, we want it to face the same way as this. We have various orientation options. We need to not just select a line but we need to know where that line is meant to go. So if you imagine that center point, at the moment that line I've got is going through that center section of that profile.

If I select any of these positions, it will automatically start to adjust those locations. So you can see the line going through the back edge there of that shape. Now this is really quite powerful, especially when you're placing individual beams. You need to get the orientations and the angles right. Some of you will design your envelopes and you want the beams to go in the inside of that shape. That's your maximum size. Some that's the void that you want to encapsulate so you want the beams on the outside. So it's quite important that you get the right one.

If you need to, we can also adjust these. So I can put in an angle of 90 degrees and rotate those. Or I can align directly with an individual face. And what it will do is it will go through and rotate to that face. So if you don't know what angle you want, you can get it to match to something. So the other thing adjusts, it should adjust the entire frame as well. So it's some really quite powerful options there.

What you'll find is it adjusts all the members that you're trying to place at that point in time. That's important. You will find if you are doing, let's say, you do a frame for a tool bed or something like that. You might want to put a vertical beam on the different legs across that component. You will probably need to do different angles. So you'll be inserting one corner and applying certain on another, adjusting the angle, apply. It's a quick way of building up those frames.

We can also adjust the position and x and y relative to those frames as well by putting a value in. So an example of this-- and we're going to see it later anyway. Refine just this so it's looking at the back edge here. And I can say well, actually, I want these to be another 50 mil off that edge. And it will adjust it, so push it 50 mil out. So my frame doesn't have to be on that line, it can be offset as much as we want. And that's quite important when we're adding multiple frame members using the same edge with the same line. Let's take that back, and zero, center that.

So we've got this ability to pick lines that's great. All I'm going to do is then hit, OK. Inventor is now going to go and actually start creating parts. This is the power of it. If you've ever tried to place a frame section from content center, it comes up with that same as if you're placing a nut, bolt, or a washer, comes up with a table asking what size you want.

There's also a custom option where it will ask you what length you want. This is basically doing that in the background. It's taking that frame section, it's adjusting that length, and it's creating individual files for each frame section. It's very different how some other cad programs work. Some other cad programs, your entire frame is in one design. I don't like that. I like to be able to split down my design. I like to be able to add holes and adjust things, reuse components. So this works a lot better for me.

You'll get a display name. You'll get a file name. You can adjust both. I just tend to hit the defaults and then rename it once it's in bold. But if I hit OK, Inventor's going to go away and start creating those frame sections for me. We can go through, we can create this as many times as we want. So I can select lots of different beams, just add them in wherever I need to and it will create them. It is very quick and very simple.

We also, though, have the ability that if you don't have an edge or a line there that you want to select, we have the option to not just select by an individual edge, but we can actually do this based on points as well. So if I select by points, I get two selection options and I can pick which point I want to go to, to where I want to go. And it'll go through and try and put that profile between those points.

Those points could be anywhere. It could be at this point over here. So you don't have to necessarily model everything, you just need to get the envelope with enough points to build the frame that you want. So last frame that I need to put in, I'm just going to put this section in on here. I'm going to take it off point-to-point and put it back to individual leg, and just adjust that around 90 degrees. Hit OK and it'll create that frame section for me. Very quick, very simple.

This is a-- I do apologize, my voice is going already. There we go. So this is the easy bit. You've taken the content center. We've picked the sizes that we want. We just put those sizes on to different edges within Inventor. That frame looks a bit of a mess. It's not my best work.

How do we adjust this? We need to tidy up various edges. We need to miter things so that they interact together. We need to be able to trim things. We need to notch things. And that's where we have these tools at the top. We have mitered, notch, trim to frame, trim extend, length, and shorten. Their very much, monkey see, monkey do buttons. It's all there. How do they work?

So with this, we can just select the option that we want. I can say that I want to miter something. I can come in and select two beams to miter. You guys, same as I, know that you don't just miter something. You need to be able to put weld gaps in. You need to be able to control those. Maybe you're going to pull M plates on something or something's going to bolt to each other and you need to put a fixing in there.

So we can adjust the gap sizes that we're working with. I can put two mill gap size in there if I'm welding it, if I wanted to. Any time you're adding these sort of end treatments within Inventor, you have the ability to adjust and control these gap sizes. If I hit Apply, you'll Inventor go through and actually start cutting these members.

2018, they sort of sorted out the lens so that we get more realistic lens coming through in your building materials. Used to be a slight issue when you're mitering on that one, but that's been resolved quite happily. So more of an excuse to upgrade for you all. But it's quick. It works nicely I can go through and I can start selecting-- whilst it's mitering something, I can select the next lot to miter.

If I go through and want to change that treatment-- so instead of mitering I want to, maybe, trim them, I can just select the next tool. You can see in every case we have the blue and the yellow example-- blue and a yellow selection. Blue tends to be the one that is going to be the longest component, yellow is going to be what it bumps up to.

So in this case, we're going to select the top beam and then the bottom beam as the yellow component. And, again, I can adjust those offsets if I need to within this. Currently it's mitered, so I'm going to just tell it, get rid of the existing treatment. Let's put a new type of end treatment on so you can experiment and play around with what's going to work best for you. And when I hit OK, that's going to go through and start changing that treatment. Very quick, very simple and is an absolute pain in the ass to do if you don't use these sort of tools.

These tools work across multiple design sections as well. So if I'm going to go trim to frame, I can just go through and start selecting what I want and tidy that information up. It's very quick. You're doing it as you're talking. It doesn't work in every situation. For instance, in this case, I have the end of a beam that's connecting to another. If I try to apply trim to frame in this situation, this vertical beam would actually cut down to this point.

So to combat that, we have other tools that we use. We have the ability to lengthen and shorten something. So I could take n-- section let's just insert frame on this back edge-- and adjust that, insert it there. I can say I want to lengthen that section. I can even lengthen one side and, depending on which side of the line you select-- or which side of the beam you select, it will lengthen that side. Or I can say I want to lengthen both sides. I might add on 100 mil. I don't go through and adjust length not line. See, your initial selection shouldn't limit you to what you need to do.

What we do have, though-- just going to do that-- the other option, which is trim to an existing face. Now this is really powerful. You can trim an angle, you can trim round geometry, and you can multi-select with it as well. So in this situation, I can take a bottom member, this middle member, and the top member. Tell it I want to select a face, such as this one here. And any weld gaps in that I want and just hit OK. And what it'll do is it'll go through and actually adjust all three of those beams at the same time. You can see those having adjusted there.

Again, like all the tools, you can multi-select. They don't have to be the same sort of profile. So we can select these three here and tell them to go into this face. And they can be in different orientations if you need to as well. You might have a tapered member that you also need to adjust to that same face at the same time.

Now this bit is the bit that seems to take most of the design time. You're having to go through, you're having to adjust as many members as you can, generally, as quickly as you can as you're talking during a demo. But it is quick, it's simple, and it gives you the result that you want. I think I've got that one there I can leave. But this one here, I want to just trim as well. Hopefully you get the idea with this.

Where we need to, we can also extend that slightly as well. So it could be that I've got a frame member. I'm going to put in a circular hollow section. I might decide that it's going to go between here and this point over here. Did I get that point? No. Needs a site to size. There we go. Let's put a size in, hit OK, create that beam. I want that beam to be able to go in there. I don't want to trim it.

One of the options that I might want to be able to do is to notch that shape out of the existing member. So, again, we've got this ability to notch based on the geometry you're hitting. And it doesn't have to be the frame sections, it can be any other profile that you're hitting.

So in this case, I'm going to select the member that I'm going to cut first. I always get these the wrong way around. Look at the diagram. Look at what it's showing you. It's showing you yellow is going to be the selection it's keeping. Blue is the selection it's getting material away from. So I'm going to select the member I want to remove material from first and then the component that I'm actually going to notch from. When I hit OK, It's going to go through and actually start cutting out that shape.

So if I just get rid of it, you can see that hole coming through. Now for most engineers, that doesn't do what you need. When you're notching something, you want a bit of a well-gapped rounder. I'm going to show you later on how we can do that within the content center. It's something we have to kind of pre-authorize, so to speak, beforehand. So we'll take a look at that one.

Because frame generator uses the various design accelerators, if you want to remove anything, it's not a simple case of just selecting something and hit Delete. You need to right click and, within that right click, you'll have the option to delete frame member-- or you should have. It's always good when it works well. I don't for some reason. We'll ignore that. I'll just hit Undo. But you have that ability to do that.

The frame generator is very responsive to changes. One of the things that you need to be able to do as you're designing frames-- and we're going to see this when we go onto the analysis side-- is that we need to be able to adjust not just the position but the sizes of members as well that we've already placed. We have the ability using this Change button.

So if I hit change, I can select one. Or if I hit multi-select, more members-- and I appreciate we're going through this at speed, but we've got a lot to get through. I can hit that member and I can start to adjust the orientation of this. I can start to push the orientation. I can adjust the sizes of it. I might decide to change the actual value in there. Before I do that, always a good bet to measure what size you need. And if you've not used 2018 before, you'll see there's a new measurement command. I quite like it. I can right click and just copy that and paste into the window whenever I want.

So I'm going to change this member at the top. And I'm just going to paste that value in and adjust that member up. What frame generator will do in the background is not just adjust this beam, but it's also adjusted the connected beam in the background. It's lengthened that so it meets and carries on meeting those end conditions. Really quite powerful. It means that you can dynamically change your design and adapt that design as it goes through.

For those of you that need it as well, we also have the ability to select a member and reuse it. This was a bit of functionality that came in 20-- after 2010. Might be 2011 or 12 release of Inventor. It's a long time ago, anyway. So it's been in for a while. At the moment, each one of these beams is unique. You could drill a hole in one and it wouldn't affect the other.

We might have the situation where, actually, I need to get rid of one of these beams which I can do, and I might decide to reuse that component. So I can pick the source member and then tell it where it's going to place that-- what edge is it going to place it on. And it will reuse that same file and that's quite important-- that same file in multiple locations. So if you need to drill a hole one, it's drilled in all rather than having to drill holes in every single location.

It takes a little bit to get used to. You need to think about offhand sizes and shapes and that sort of thing. But it's very easy to use. You can then also change whether that beam's reused to make something independent as well so you don't have to recreate it every time. I'm almost done talking, I promise. I can talk forever about Inventor, it's fun.

There are some second retools that Autodesk have put in there that are very much hidden away as well. You can expand those. Like anything in Inventor, you can move those on to the quick access toolbar, move them on to the main ribbon as well. So I could take this frame member info, move that to the main panel. And that will actually appear in here. So that when that ribbon is not expanded, you can select that-- select any beam and get the information about it at that point.

Sometimes this is useful. You want to know the area, you want to know the mass of that beam very quickly without having to open it. Quite important if you're doing any transportation calculations, that sort of thing, or looking at what stock you're going to need. But it is a very quick way of being able to see the information on the beams.

Additionally, if you need it-- we're going to show better ways of doing this-- you also have the method of selecting a beam and starting to look through the different sizes and dimensions on that beam. You can select the materials that you want to use based on your library. So I can say, actually, what happens if I make this out of stainless? Adjust the yield strength in different grades within there as well and then start doing some calculations on this.

So I can say, well, this is going to be a beam. I could say, what happens if it's a column? But in a beam, I can then start going through and start adding in a diagrammatic sort of manner, support. So I can say, well, there's going to be a support there. There's going to be a support at the other side of this. And it's very much a case of just picking points. I managed to pick the seam with two points there, but anyway.

We can then put loads on as well. So I can say well, I'm going to have a continuous load across this beam. I want it to be this distance from the beginning of this section, I want it to be this length, I want it to have this continuous load, whatever you need. It's a very kind of rough and ready calculation.

What it allows us to do, though, is put in these values and sort of see whether we are hitting the right value. The only thing I would say is make sure that you fill in all the information. It needs to know different bits of information. You'd need that if you're doing a hand calc anyway, you just need to enter that in. I'll put in some values that Sven, who actually does analysis, is going to tell me off about just because it's the first ones I hit.

But if I go in and then hit Calculate, it'll go through and tell me whether that is an acceptable member or not. If I look at the beam graph, I can see what the loads are. I can see the displacements that they think are going to be on that. So we have a way of analyzing individual members within here.

How often did I use that when I worked at Kone? Zilch. We wanted to analyze the entire structure, not an individual member. Where we were analyzing an individual member, we go more to the FEA side. But that's just me, you might do it different.

SVEN ERIKSSON: We'll see.

CHRIS ATHERTON: So, just-- I think that's enough for me for the second while I catch my breath. I'll move on to my colleague.

SVEN ERIKSSON: So there's at least one reason for me to be here.

CHRIS ATHERTON: Exactly.

SVEN ERIKSSON: Yeah, as Chris said, you can do it in many ways. Oh, maybe we should show.

CHRIS ATHERTON: You're on two screens? Yeah, you're in extended.

SVEN ERIKSSON: Like that instead. I think we'll guess that that one. Where did my modem go? I don't agree, really. It's not in my model lost.

CHRIS ATHERTON: I'll tell you what, while you are sorting that, let me just flip back and-- there's got to be something. So, basically, with what you've seen so far, I know it's been fast and furious. But any questions at this point at all?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

CHRIS ATHERTON: So question is about bills and materials. Can it generate the bills and materials? What I'm going to say there is wait until the end of the presentation. That's coming up after the analysis, but, yes. We have different types of billets and materials you might need to do. So cutting this as well as more manufactured materials, so we need to get different information in there. So, yes, we can. We'll take a look at that later on.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

CHRIS ATHERTON: So the question there was-- I know it's a quiet room-- if we need to end plates on and we want to have our own profiles within that, can we do it? The answer is, yes, but they won't add in at the same time. So if you add your frame section, it's not going to put in automatically a separate end plate. But we have methods of doing that.

You can use iLogic to do that. So you could have a routine that just goes through and adds end plates based on iMates. Or a method I'll show you later if we have time, you can actually pre-authorize the components, the sections, into content center with an iMate on. Put the end caps on with iMates as well, and then you're just placing them from content and snapping them to the locations.

SVEN ERIKSSON: You ready?

CHRIS ATHERTON: We'll take more questions after this if that's all right. I can see you waiting.

SVEN ERIKSSON: Yes, I'm ready. Yes, as Chris said, it's several different ways of doing analysis inside Inventor. We have the simplified one looking at one simple beam. We have pretty much the same looking at the shaft. We can do the simplest calculation of welds. And then we have four more steps to the other end and one of them I'm going to show here. It's the frame analysis part.

We also have dynamic simulation and we have this stress analysis and we have [INAUDIBLE]. The difference between them is that in frame analysis, as I'm going to show now, you look at everything just from a beam perspective. So you don't really look to the connections. You don't look-- for example in this end, this wouldn't really work. You need some brackets to transfer the load up in this corner. That will not turn out correctly when you do a frame analysis simulation. Then you need to add the plates and the brackets and move to your metal stress test.

But we stopped running this one and we go to Inventor frame analysis and click Create a simulation. And decide to make a static analysis. And what will happen now is that the frame model is imported and we automatically get connections between each beam. Always some complaints-- in this case, we have no torsional constant. So it was a little bit complaining. It's back.

And what happens now is that every beam gets a node, we can call it, in each end. And if we zoom in to this corner, as the beam-- they don't and at the same position as they are shortened. And what the software does automatically is that it makes a rigid link. It defines the master node or a parent node and it defines slave nodes or child nodes connecting to that one. So this red piece is a rigid link connecting the beams. So we have a ideal load transfer.

And, as I said, in this corner as it looks now, it isn't, in reality, an ideal load transfer. But this is how it's done and it gives very good, extremely correct calculation of a beam model. Then you might need to modify some of these connections depending on where the master node lands or the parent node lands. You might need to move around a little to be able to put boundary conditions, et cetera on the right place.

But what you need to do now is you have the structure, so to say, and you need to add boundary conditions and loads. And, as in Inventor and as in any kind of FEA software, always you work from left to right. And when you reach the simulate or run button, you almost have your results.

So what we do is we start fixing this structure without boundary conditions. The boundary conditions is the conditions that define how the model is allowed to move. And when we say, fixed, fixed means fixed in all six degrees of freedom. So it's not allowed to rotate, it's not allowed to move. And in this case, we have two points-- these two ends that we define as fixed.

And it's-- as I always say when trying to teach out FEA simulations, it is in the boundary conditions that you almost always do your errors. That is the hardest way to decide how to fix it. Because, very often, people tend to feel that this is stiffly attached to the ground. If you put four bolts to the ground, you might feel it's stiff, but it's not. Usually that works as a hinge even if you have bolted it pretty hard. Because those four balls are a lot weaker than the beam, so it will tilt a little. So most often, it's more correct to use pin constraint and make it allowed to sway around a little.

In this case, we have this node. As you see, it's probably not that node you would like to attach, but that is the parent node. So that's what we have to pick as the seventh in the cell. So you can move around with those if you want to.

In this case, we have these four positions that we want to pin up like that. So now we have put our boundary conditions. The next step is to apply loads. And the loads can be almost anything. It can be point forces, it can be continuous loads over the beams, it can be moments. I'm going to make this pretty simple as though I just attached a load. And, in this case, I'm going to put it as a horizontal load on this beam. I click where to put it, I use the handles to orientate it. I can put any angle I want if I go to the beam. I'm allowed to type in the load. In this case, I put one ton on that one. And I click Enter. I have the load on. I continue to make the same on the opposite side. Like that down that way.