Inventor 2019: The Sharpest Tool for Woodworking

PRESENTER: You can see how long it is. It's about eight feet long. But you can create a snake puzzle. The dowel that you see going through there is what holds it all together. You pull the dowel out the eyes. I haven't taken a picture since, but I've shortened the dowel, cut it up, painted it black. And when you pull it apart, it looks like that.

I just love doing stuff to see if I can do it. My daughter is avidly into pugs, right? So I made her a pug puzzle. But I did some things with the pug puzzle to make it more fun. I cut pieces like that on a scroll saw. End pieces like that. And everybody in here know how you cut puppies, how you make puppies with a scroll saw? Like that.

[LAUGHING]

She gets the puzzle. It's all pieces, right? And then she gets to this one here, and she goes, "Oh, Dad, you cut the back." I'm like, "I'm sorry, sweetheart, I know. I just messed up and I had to go with it." And then she's like, oh, OK. And then about 30 seconds later I get, "Oh, Dad."

[LAUGHING]

But you can have fun with things, right? She's the only girl in the world that has a puzzle with this in it. And there's more. So we like to have fun. I'm just going to go through some things, just to give you an idea of the scope of work I do. I have a 20-inch band saw. It's one of the biggest investments I ever made. But it allows me to mill wood.

Does anybody in here cut their own wood, or mill their own wood? No? Yes, two? OK. You sticker it, and let it dry, I'm assuming? OK. Stickers are just pieces of wood. You stack your boards up and put weight, like concrete blocks, on it, so it stays flat. Because otherwise it'll warp. You whet the ends down with a sealer-- I can't remember, there's a waxy sealer you put on the ends so they don't crack, they don't-- there's a name for that. Check. The ends don't check. And then you let them dry, like you see in here.

A use case for this, by the way-- we're going to talk about organic, what's good for Inventor, and what's good for AutoCAD, too. How many AutoCAD users in the room? Oh, cool. Old school. All right. I started in AutoCAD in '94. Release 11. A lot of things that are very straightforward that are organic and inorganic in shape. So very square, straight, easy to look at, easy to figure out. It's easier to do an AutoCAD. You don't have to spend the time modeling in Inventor if you don't want to.

So I just created a corner cabinet for between two couches. And it just has a couple of tilt-up lids on it. Very straightforward, four posts on the side and slots in between. Did it in AutoCAD. I could figure out where I had to route my slots of full mortars on either side, and really easy to do. Something like this-- you can draw a circle in AutoCAD, right here on the end of your log. So just get the diameter of your log. And then you can play with what size boards you want to cut out of it, if you want. So it's very simple things to figure out to maximize your material use, if you know what thickness you're going to need for the project, or if you know what width you're going to need. The thickness or the width can drive how you slice those things up. We have some really cool tools at hand.

Why use Inventor for projects? The number one reason I use Inventor on projects is because it allows me to make mistakes and not have to pay for it in board feet. Right? I can pay for it in pixels. I guess I don't have a very good internet connection in here. Darn. Oh, well. I don't know how well you can see this. I want to just try and open this, and see if it opens. It's not going to open, is it? Shoot. That's too bad.

Well, I don't have a good enough internet connection. I didn't have enough time. By the way, I was on the floor yesterday. Did you all get the thing that said "class canceled"? All right. I get it. I was on the show floor down like, "No! I wanted to go to this thing!" So I said, maybe we could all get together and talk, all right? So I asked them and they said, yeah, come on up real quick. So this is how we got here. That's how much time I had to prepare for all this. And now-- oh, I'm not connected. How did I lose a connection? Hopefully this does it. Connect. I just walked down the hall. I didn't even shut my computer off. So let's try it again. There we go.

So here's a corner cabinet. This is one that really, really lends itself well-- and I'll show you this in Inventor. I pulled it up in Inventor. So this is on there. Mom, what you can't see is when you go down the hall, this is the end of the hall. This is the wall at the end of the hall. There's a door here into my daughter's room, and this is the door to our bedroom. So there's plenty of room in there for something. But if I build a full cabinet it gets in the way. Right? So my wife's like, can we do a triangular cabinet? I said, sure. So this was going to have a door in front of the hamper, and I got this far, and she's like, "No, no, don't touch it. Just like this. Leave it." I've got two doors downstairs and I'm not doing anything with them. But there's going to be a tilt-out door and all that on there.

This is really nice because it allows me to do some finer detail work here, with the beveled edge on the bottom, and these odd corners, and back here. And how am I going to deal with the plywood that goes in between? Because I wanted to keep it lightweight. So on the back, it's plywood. And I cut sea turtles and everything, because my wife loves them and it's kind of like an in-house brand. And you see how we filled it up with some nautical things in there, and put some-- what do you call it-- hung some netting in there. So it's kind of got this oceany type feel to it.

But in Inventor-- this is how it actually looks in Inventor. It's awfully dark in here. It's just on the screen. You can't see much detail, but in Inventor, I can grab the door and open it. So you can do things like that. And this is called an assembly in Inventor. So in Inventor, the way Inventor works-- and we'll get to this at the end of the class-- is you open up Inventor and you say, create a new part. Right? There's a couple of ways to do it. You can start in an assembly, and then within the assembly say, now I want to create a part. Or you can create a bunch of parts, and when you're done, open an assembly and bring those parts into the assembly. So you can work from the top down or the bottom up. It's just a matter of getting comfortable with either way. Whatever you like better.

But this is an assembly. And this assembly is made up of one door. How many doors are here? Two doors. How many doors did I make? One door. Because they're both identical. So I just inserted the same door twice. So you don't have to do all the work. You can do simple things like that. It also has these triangular boards in here. And for this, I didn't model all the boards I wanted. I just modeled one. Because all I need is the dimensions of one, and I can print that out and cut as many as I want to, right?

But where Inventor really gets cool is, how do you make these connections in here, and what are you doing with this piece, and how deep are the mortars you're going to run in it, and do you want to rabbet it instead? And all those questions come up. And you can play with it. And you can see how it looks. Right? Does that look like plywood? Yeah. Does it look really bad? Not too bad, especially when you hang netting over it. It kind of looks more like a little rough and tumble, right? And that's what we wanted it to look like. So I can ask my wife, does this look good? "Yeah, this looks really cool." So you get to do stuff like that in here. And it's very easy to apply materials to things, and what have you.

So this, right here-- let me go back. Where am I? Corner cabinet. Oh, I already had it up. So there is what Inventor will spit out. And we'll see if I can zoom out to this. So in Inventor, there's a process whereby-- and you guys, I don't want to have to get into all this for the sake of time. But you can just go online, you can Google the snot out of this in YouTube and everything. It's all over the place. How do you get to this? You simply create a new file-- you say, new file from this file. And it's an IDW file, I believe. Anybody remember who knows what I'm talking about? IDW? Or either one, right. DWG or IDW. I guess they're almost identical in format.

But anyways, new IDW. And then you literally drag views from the model into here. And you can rotate these views, and you can annotate them. And I've got all my angles worked out down here. So there's a 90 on that. It's 1.41, because this is 1 inch, so 1.41 is the hypotenuse. There are some angles in here. This was awfully small. I think I blew this up-- this little tiny piece, blew it up a little bigger, maybe. I don't know. It's a little pixilated on the screen, here, but on the paper it looks sharp. But there's my top and bottom pieces. I don't remember what that top one is, but that one is right. And the doors, and the panels, and those kinds of things. So it's all worked out.

And I actually didn't do it the way I wanted to, here, but 22.125-- so 22 and 1/8, right? 21.813-- I don't remember what that was, or how I dealt with that. But you can change the units from decimal point to fraction, or whatever you want to do with it. And you know what tolerances you have to hold. So as long as I'm within a 16th, I'm good, or what have you. But this is so cool.

And here's the really, really cool part. Ready? If I go back to this-- I get back in the model, I haven't started building yet, but I already printed that out-- and my wife says, you know what? It looks a little tall in the hallway, or whatever. I think it might need to be shorter, or whatever. And I go and fix this. Guess what happens to my IDW or DWG file? Automatically updates. Yeah. And the dimensions stick. It's all done. It's nice, slick.

So this is a perfect project for that. The snake head you saw? Not doing that in Inventor, right? You're just going in there and starting to cut the thing up and have fun with it. Very, very inorganic projects. I wish I had the corner cabinet-- I may have the corner cabinet. Hold on a second here. I just didn't think of this. Let me see.

AUDIENCE: That same process in Inventor is very similar to the [INAUDIBLE] in AutoCAD. [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: And it's very similar in which?

AUDIENCE: The basic plan in AutoCAD, where you've got your [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Oh. I was not aware of that.

AUDIENCE: I'm not sure which one they pulled that from, but they're almost identical in the way they work. I teach both.

PRESENTER: Oh, OK. Yeah. No, that's perfect. See, you could have been the guy on the floor yesterday, like, "No!" All right.

AUDIENCE: I love that.

PRESENTER: Did you? Oh. Well, heck. Yeah.

AUDIENCE: One of the only advantages is you can actually retrieve all the dimensions out of your model. And then automatically take a range of it.

AUDIENCE: Right.

AUDIENCE: Come on. You're setting us up, just using an annotation scale. So you set [INAUDIBLE] in a 3/4 scale. You set it aside, so your partner and you put it up there, and then it scales your annotation and stuff on that. [INAUDIBLE]. It's really, really slick. It even includes the hidden lines, and things like that, automatically. That's why I said it's also a work in AutoCAD, as well. So I'm not sure which one they pulled it from. Inventor is a little bit more robust on the layouts, positioning of the dimensions and stuff. AutoCAD isn't [INAUDIBLE] push that backwards to AutoCAD. I teach it, and my students respond with [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Yep. And Inventor and AutoCAD work very well together. So you can use one to inform the other. So for instance, if I have a pattern in AutoCAD and I want to bring that into Inventor, I can bring it into the Inventor sketching environment and literally copy those elements up, or sketch over them. I think you can actually just bring them into, and then dimension them, and go. So I literally take a CAD file and don't have to, like, redraw, redraw, redraw. I just insert, bring it up, and then extrude it, if you want to extrude. Or whatever option you want to use. Rotate, revolve, what have you.

This is the corner cabinet. This is very straightforward. What is this? This is a plan view. There is the elevation, right? And all four sides are identical. But the mortising is what was the trick. So if I'm mortis-down-- imagine this mortis in here, all the way down. I'd have the two boards colliding with each other, right? And what do we do when we don't do this? We end up in the shop with two boards colliding. [LAUGHING] Because our brains just can't account for everything. We think we've got it, but our brains don't. Here, it's all tracked, so we can see, visually, what's going to happen.

That was one. Another one that was very simple, very straightforward, was this one here. And you're looking at a plan view-- or, sorry, at an elevation view of a floating bookshelf. So some friends of ours-- not you. [LAUGHING] Yeah. Good to see you. Some friends of ours-- their parents, elderly parents, passed away. And they had this house. And I walked in their garage, because we were out there hunting, and I looked-- and there's piles, stacks of raw-cut, rough-sawn wood. Like, what is that?

It's pecan. Whoa, yeah. I don't know, probably 200 or 300 board feet of pecan, or more. It's insane. And unfortunately, they didn't dry it right, so a lot of it's warped, and so a lot of it's got black mold on it. So when you're out planning, it's like, go run the other way. But we ran into this pecan wood, and I said, "What are you going to do with that?" They aren't going to do anything with it. And they said, "It's all yours if you want it. Can you build this type of stuff out of it?" I'm like, sure. So they wanted a floating bookshelf.

So I took the boards out and milled them up, or planed them out, and dimensioned them, because I had to figure out where, between these two windows that they have-- this is two windows they gave me dimensions for in their house-- where are the studs? So they went and told me where the studs were. So from the left window, it was 5 inches from the window to the edge of the board, and then 12 inches from that. 12 and 5? 17. Roughly 16 inches from the edge of the window, right? So you come in 1 inch at 16, 16 on center-- studs, right? There's the stud pattern.

So what I did was I measured the back, where I would need to put these keyhole plates. And I just went, and bought some bar stock at Ace, drilled out some holes, routed it out with a dremel tool, and put those plates on the back. Literally routed the back of the wood. Put those in place and figured out how she wanted them joined. And I was sending her screenshots of the joinery. So we could do this kind of joint here, or I could do it-- everybody know what a waterfall joint is? What that means? Yes, no? Anybody not know what that is? OK.

Waterfall, it would be if I cut this-- here's the thing. If I cut it on a 45 degree and join them. But here's the thing-- it's one piece of wood. And I run the cut 45 degrees this way and that way. So I'm actually removing material. And then I bring it down. Guess what the grain does? The grain waterfalls. So it's only a waterfall joint if it was the same board where you cut it. Does that make sense?

And what's really cool about that-- and I wish I could bring up some photos of it-- is, anybody ever do any work with slabs? Have fun with that. There's some really cool things you can do with slabs. I have one slab that kind of bends. And I almost wanted to make a bench out of it, and I never could figure out what to do with it. Still in the garage, but now I know what I'm doing. I'm going to take the ends and I'm going to waterfall cut them at a slightly odd angle. So the ends, instead of facing each other, will be just slightly bent, because it follows the board. And so it will look very natural. It's going to be really cool.

So these are the kinds of things I could do with AutoCAD. I can send her these-- just take a PNG out of here, put it on Facebook, and say, hey, does this look right? Is this what you want? So they verified for me she said, yeah, I showed my husband. He measured again. Yes, this is exactly correct, place the plates there. And you can see the plate here is 12 inches from the end on that side and 14 and 5/8 on that side. Who would normally do that? No one, right? It's going to be dead center because it's being sold en masse or whatever. But you can customize. So you can do stuff like that.

What was this one here? Oh, there's the-- yeah. I had to do that, too. Is this easier to do in AutoCAD? Absolutely. Real quick and easy to do. So this is some of the things we can do there. Cancel. I didn't make changes. No. Wait. No. So, let me see. Let's go back to that.

All right. There's the corner cabinet. We have to clean up before we go. So we'll close that. All it needs is a creaking sound, right?

[MIMICS CREAKING DOOR]

Ask them for that feature. All right, let's get rid of that.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Yeah, on the ideas station. All right. So here's a bigger one. Does this lend itself to Inventor? This really lends itself to Inventor. My daughter wanted a loft bed. And actually, I put-- I don't know what they call them. Well, you see lawn chairs where they have the big mats on them, and they have the little buttons, and it just cushions all around. You know what I'm talking about? I did that cushion thing, just to see what it looked like, in Fusion. That was an easy one to do in Fusion, because it's more organic stuff that's going on there. And then put that, as a mat, down here. So you could sleep down here, if you wanted to. And these drawers, they pull out. I gave them different materials.

And then, what I did inside of here for each of the poles where you slide the runners-- the rails down, is I did a full dovetail. So what you do is you route a--

[PHONE RINGING]

Sorry. Are there any other idiots in the class that left their phone on? No? I'm the only idiot.

So anyways, I routed a full dovetail. And what you do is you route a dovetail-- does everybody know what a dovetail is? OK. Route a full dovetail down the length that you want to route, there, and slide your boards down. And then you route the other dovetail, the matching dovetail, on the end of the rail. And you can literally slide them in place. And if you do it right-- the fairly thick one-- they're very, very strong. They're not going anywhere, right? They're going to hold real well. This is with hardwood, not softwood. All bets are off on softwood.

So this is how I did all this in here. I have not built this one yet, because I didn't have all that pecan wood. But now I can build it, because I've got tons of pecan wood. So she's going to have one extremely heavy bed. So remember I said that in Inventor, we have parts and assemblies. What are we looking at here? This is an assembly of a bunch of parts. And each of these parts-- you can see, as I hover over them, what each of the parts are. They're turning red. Everybody see that on screen? Yeah. OK, you can see that. So if I go to this piece here and right-click, I can come down here to open, and it will open that part for me.

So I can go into the different parts, and I can say, I want to show this with all the drawers open. And you can put stops on it. If you don't put a stop on it, the drawer will go shooting off the screen. But you put stops on it. There. And, let's see. I was going to save it, but I forgot. If I want to just push this back to the main model without having to save and close, is that possible? Do you remember? I opened the drawer, and I want all the drawers in the model to be open, so I want to just push this back to the main model without saving and closing, or saving it. I don't think I can. I think I have to--

AUDIENCE: You're going to have to save it.

PRESENTER: You have to save it. All right. Yep. All right. I was wondering, because I haven't-- it's been a while since I've done this. And I was thinking, which way is there? Is there a shortcut? And there's not. Whoops. Let's close that. And you go back and voila, all the drawers are open. So all these models are linked. They're all alive, whatever you do with them, any changes. And they're all rules-based, too. So if you say the outside of the drawer, the drawer case, is going to be 3/4 of an inch away from the drawer side, no matter what, and then I decide to change one or the other-- that relationship being established, I only move one, and the others will move and update with them. They should. And it's called flexing your model.

And anybody that's used Revit, you can flex a Revit model as well. You can just test your model. And one of the things you want to do, whenever you're working in Inventor, and especially if you're working in the Revit family editor, is as soon as you change anything, flex it. Test it. Does it move the way you expect? If it doesn't, and you don't test it, you're going to find out 17 steps later. Yeah. Yeah. And that's where you're going to have to go outside to shake it off, come back in, so you don't throw the mouse through the wall, and back all the way up, and find out where you made a mistake. So flex after every test in Inventor or Revit. Is there a question? No? OK.

So, let me see. I don't remember what the third one was that I opened. Oh I remember what was. All right. This is kind of fun. So woodworkers, right? I bought a Minimax band saw, a 20-inch band saw. And it had a piece of crap exhaust port on the front that, when you walked by, just the breeze from you walking by breaks it. So it broke within 20 minutes of setting the thing up. And I thought, you know what. We've got 3D printers now. All right. Let's model this stupid thing, and model a better one, too. Because the way the old port looked, the old port just came straight down and stopped right out here. I don't want a hose running straight out of my machine. I want the hose to go off to the side and be out of the way, right? So let's do that.

As it turns out, what I need to do is, there's the bottom wheel door. I need to drill a hole in that, and put a collection port in there. Because as soon as you run a band saw, you can see where all the sawdust collects. So you know the best place to stick your port. Create a couple extra ports, and you have your dust collection system hooked up to it, and you're good to go. If you can't find the port attachment, which is likely, you might be able to find some common port attachment and just cut the hole in the saw to match that. You're good to go. But if you can't, you can 3D print one and drop it in resin, and it's hard. You know, epoxy resin-- hard as steel after that. So there's other things besides woodworking that you can use Inventor for. Just keep thinking outside the box. And then find a buddy that's got a 3D printer.

[LAUGHING]

So I'm going to-- let's just do this. All right. Let's do a new part, just so everybody can see what we're doing inside of Inventor. So when you first open it up, and you say, here's a new part, you have to start creating by creating a sketch. So unless you know that-- I mean, without some training, you wouldn't know it. I learned Inventor in 2001. There was no YouTube. So I went to a local reseller and got some training. Took me a week, and learned how to do everything I needed to do. And the one thing I bought it for is to be able to create flexible hose. And I said, can I create flexible hose in Inventor? And they said, sure. So I said, all right. I told my boss, we're going to go do this. We've got the venter, we've got the training.

And at the end of the training I said, all right, show me how to make the flexible hose. And the technical guy is like, what do you mean? And here's the salesman-- the salesman's standing right behind him. "I asked you, can it do flexible hose. You said yeah." Like this? No, like this. And I was trying to explain. He's showing me. I said, if you put these two parts together and put a hose here, and you move them together, the hose will flex up or flex down. Well, a venter can't do that. Anybody ever been there with the reseller? Yeah. So that was before, that was 2001. I came to Autodesk in 2007. And I swore I would never do that to anybody. But that's how I got into it. Fortunately, it does a lot of other cool things. And so it worked out.

So, when you get in, start a new sketch. And this comes up. So what is this? These are your axes and planes that you can work on. And if you hover over them, it'll tell you what this is. It'll highlight each plane. So you have front, back, left, right. You pick which one you want. OK. And depending on what plane you want to work on, you pick that plane. And now it rotates me to that plane, and now I can start drawing geometry on that plane, or line work.

So in here, if I do something simple, like a rectangle-- I can pick a rectangle with a two-point center. And if you look down here, it'll tell you what you need to do. There it says select the center. Everybody see that in the bottom-left corner, right down there? So you pick your center point, center axis here. And then you can create whatever geometry you want. So there's my rectangle. On top of that, I can come up here and put dimensions on things. So I can click this side, and there's that dimension. Let me-- could you see that OK, up there?

AUDIENCE: It's kind of light when you're actually putting in [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: So that's 5.3. And I can say, you know what? I need this to be 0.5. I put another dimension up here. And I need this to be 0.75. And so now, it's driving my geometry. And if for some reason it's not locked-- it doesn't want to lock, either.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: I was just trying to drag and drop it on there.

AUDIENCE: One is the coincidental [INAUDIBLE].

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

PRESENTER: And move it off? And then--

AUDIENCE: Straight up. To the left of the other. No.

PRESENTER: I think I've got the line. Yep, I get the line. This, pick very carefully. That-- I don't know why it's not picking. Try it one more time. There's that. My mouse is too-- there we go. There. It's just hard to pick with the mouse for some reason. I guess my mouse is moving too fast. But anyways, that right there is a rectangle.

Do you start with a sketch? We could start with a circle. We could start with a circle and a line. And if I did a circle and a line, I could take the circle and then use revolve, and pick the line as my center, and redraw the circle around. Now I have a donut. And that came over as a technical term for what it is. But in here, I can either say "finish sketch," or I can just hit the E key for extrude.

And there you can see it's wanting to extrude, and here's the direction it wants to extrude. And you can control the extrusion here. You can pick a profile. So if there was a hole in the center of this, I could pick the hole or the extrusion itself. So there's what you're picking. It's going to create a solid for me. I can put in the distance that I want here. So if I want just 1 inch. And by the way, here's what's cool. What if I did this? Would it take it? Yep. Inventors, really nice. So it understands 1 millimeter versus 1 inch, and if you don't put anything on it, you're going to get 1 inch.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Oh, doesn't it? OK.

AUDIENCE: If [INAUDIBLE], it doesn't work.

PRESENTER: No kidding. Oh, wow.

AUDIENCE: You can even do math right there in that block. You can do 1 plus 3 equals 4.

PRESENTER: Yes. Yes, that's right. And--

AUDIENCE: With the dimensions, you can do that.

PRESENTER: Yep.

AUDIENCE: And you can play out all the different ones.

AUDIENCE: If you're trying to make this parametric in the future, you can actually create a variable at the same time. So this variable game equals $2,000.

PRESENTER: So-- where was it. Where's my functions? Is it manage? Here. Functions, parameters. This is an area where you can really start getting into things and creating rules. This a rule I want to use for this particular thing. But remember we talked about how far the door is going to be at work, or the side's going to be away from the box. It's going to be away from the edge. You can create rules to drive certain things in here and save those rules. And if you get really fancy with it, you can even have Excel sheets. Put a cell sheet together and it'll drive all this stuff for you as well. There's a lot you can do with it.

But this is why you use Inventor for woodworking. Because when you create these objects in here, and you start putting them together as assemblies, what you end up with is you end up with some pretty sophisticated things that weren't really that hard to build. Because the pieces are fairly straightforward. And then, putting them together is a lot of fun. That's my favorite part. You know why it's really cool, putting stuff together in Inventor? Because when you create an assembly with parts and say, import this part, and you lock it, what does it do?

[CLUCKS TONGUE]

Right, makes that sound. It's just a feeling like, yeah, baby. That's where I want it. And it works, right? It's just fun. It's like you're literally getting to play LEGOs, virtually.

AUDIENCE: I think it's a really nice [INAUDIBLE] and all kinds of stuff.

PRESENTER: Yes. Yep. You can actually spit out how many of all these objects you have. You can figure out how many linear feet of wood you're going to need for a project, perhaps. There's a lot of different things you can do with it. And I have no idea, by the way-- I asked the AU speaker staff for PowerPoint for this class. So I wanted to synthesize whatever the poor guy had into this class. And they said, there is no PowerPoint. I'm like, OK.

So that said, this is just a high-level overview of what Inventor does, and what kind of projects it's good for. And also, where AutoCAD fits into the picture. AutoCAD is very good for just plain, straightforward, box-type things. Very inorganic-type woodworking, right? Helps quickly define what my dimensions are going to be, and what's going to fit, what's going to clash. So with that, there's a couple other things I'll show everyone. And I don't know if you guys want to gather around, and I can pass these around if you want to play with them.

I'll tell you this real quick. When you want to use this one, hold the propeller near the back. If you choke up here, it won't work. So hold this near the back, hold this near the front, and then when you rub, it will make the propeller spin. And if you just say spin the other way, it stops and spins the other way. So just make sure you tell it, "Spin the other way," and it will. So there. You can play with that and pass it around, if you like.

And the reason I'm giving you these-- and I actually have finally put these into AutoCAD, as well. Because I was just making it by memory. So if you want them, email me. I think you're going to be able to get it through the speaker management, speaker center. Email me, and if you want any plans or things of the stuff that I've done, you're welcome to them. Or you want the Inventor file, and want to reverse engineer it? It's all yours. I'm happy to share anything you want.

This one here-- it's hard to see, but I carved a stick with a ball. Or when I carved it, put together a dowel and a ball. You can buy these little balls anywhere. And I carved a hook in the end. So there's a little hook in the end of that. And there's a rubber band that goes through a hole in here, and there's a hole in the end of this for the dowel to go in. And the object of this is to get this to snap back in. So if you put it in, and you know the principle of it, it'll snap back in.

But here's the hard part. It's where people get really angry with me. I hand it to them. And so we're at the table, or whatever convention, right? And they're--

[CLICKING SOUND]

Right? Finally they do this.

[KNOCKING SOUND]

Can you see that? Looks like a problem, doesn't it? Does look like it's not quite long enough? Not a problem. If you understand the principle, this works fine. I can still do this. And let's unload it.

[KNOCKING SOUND]

Right? [LAUGHING] Now they're really mad. So you can get miles and miles out of these. Now, what I'll do is I usually cut them square. This is just for fun. Cut them square, put people's logos on them, and send them a bunch. And they literally have people come to their desk. They play with it for a minute, they put their bag down, and trying to more-- they say, hang on, I'll be right back. And they go run and get their buddy and bring him over.

And like, you try it. And now they're both trying it, and neither one can get it. And they end up taking it back to their office after you show him what it does, take it back to their office and get all the other schmucks at work to fall for it. But the point was, it brought people to the desk and it was a memorable time. It was something fun that they did at this booth. There's something else about it, I can't remember what it was. But there you go. If you want to play around with it for a minute.

So what is it you guys do? What was not answered? I don't want you to walk out and go, gosh, I wish we had talked about blank. What did you want to know? What's on your minds? Anyone? Yes.

AUDIENCE: So you were talking about [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: See you, Rich.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] what it's actually doing here, in [INAUDIBLE]. Using [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Would it work for Inventor? OK.

AUDIENCE: Does the [INAUDIBLE] that you made [INAUDIBLE]?

PRESENTER: Yes.

AUDIENCE: So because [INAUDIBLE], they're going [INAUDIBLE] pattern one at a time. [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: No. You don't have to choose the grain direction. It's a good question. So when you put the material on, that's when you choose what direction you want it to go on. But once you do it to one, you copy it, and I'm using that one in several places. It's all the same. Yes.

AUDIENCE: We do [INAUDIBLE] the grain direction. And that's impacted in this section.

PRESENTER: It would. If you have to hold that level of detail, it would impact your cut list, yes. So is woodworking for Inventor helping you with that?

AUDIENCE: It is. It just [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: I haven't seen anything new in it. And I don't work for Autodesk anymore, so I wouldn't know. And because we haven't signed NDAs, if I did know, I couldn't tell you. It's true.

AUDIENCE: I'm not aware of it, so.

AUDIENCE: Now, with Woodwork for Inventor, it's separate avenues.

PRESENTER: Yep.

AUDIENCE: It has its own grain tools. And you can also set up a material [INAUDIBLE]. Or you can go back to [INAUDIBLE].

AUDIENCE: That's right. And we build it with a stored picture. Stored pictures are elements of hospitals and [INAUDIBLE]. Reception desks, stuff like that.

PRESENTER: I would imagine that the tool that you have-- being that it works with Inventor, you'd be able to set up rules for wood grains so that every time you apply this, you'd have, now, a little feature that says, what angle do you want the wood grain at? And as you just change that angle, or slide it around, you'll see the wood grain changed to where you want, and then set it and go.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. Whether at an angle, or to the side. So if you want it to follow this direction, or you want it to follow this direction, [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: It may be something you have to do in here. Or it may be programmed in the API to do that. I'm not sure. But that's something that I think, all things considered, would be doable. To control your wood grain angles should not be putting a man on the moon, I don't think. So.

AUDIENCE: I just wanted to show [INAUDIBLE]. If you just brought an arrow on the sketch, and then you skewed it so it's very small, so that it would only show up in your [INAUDIBLE].

AUDIENCE: OK.

AUDIENCE: And then pump it in the direction you want it.

AUDIENCE: It's always [INAUDIBLE], but it's also blocks [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: What is your shop getting that they're fabricating from? Are they getting sheets? Are they getting a view in the computer? What are they looking at? Yeah, when you--

AUDIENCE: It's sheets.

PRESENTER: They're looking at sheets.

AUDIENCE: We used to use Google with Inventor. It was not corrected enough. Then we actually stepped back and were using [INAUDIBLE]. And we used it to separate what they're getting--

PRESENTER: OK. And that's working well enough for you? Or you still want to try and do this?

AUDIENCE: Well, whatever. [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Oh, no. No. Yeah, you would still have to build it. I worked for a reseller for a little bit after I left Autodesk, and one of the things we were going to start reselling was Woodwork for Inventor. And talk about salivating. Man, I was like, oh, I can't wait to get this. And then it fell through. So I never got a chance to try it. By the way, for all of those of you who are using these wonderful little fun tools, when we're done, before you leave, I'll show you how it actually works. I'll show you what the secret mechanism is inside. Other questions. Anything else? Thank you.

AUDIENCE: Could you use a [INAUDIBLE] on the right?

PRESENTER: Do I? No. I don't have one. What I want to get-- I want to get the laser cutter. I want the laser cutter because I make a lot of puzzles. There's some other things I want to make, too. Has anybody seen the butcher block that's got the shield? The guy with the shield-- the warrior with the shield? Let's pull this up real quick.

AUDIENCE: We actually exported the [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: It was right there. There you go. That's what I want to build. And this is perfect for Inventor or AutoCAD. And then the reason it's perfect is because it's 2D. It's really 2D. Everybody see that? So what you do is you put the 2D plan together for the base. We may not even need this. But you will need the alignment. So yeah, you will need the base in 2D. Because you're going to have to cut the mortise out of the bottom and the tenon under the foot. Right?

And by the way, under the foot, you don't have to indent the sides. Just this end. So you just cut in. So it can be flush on the sides, if you want it to. But that's all you're cutting out. And here's how it works. Is everyone familiar with DXF file format? OK. The cool thing about a DXF file format is any CNC machine in the world will take it. Whether it's 2D, 2 and 1/2 D, 3D, 5 axis, 16 axis. I don't care. They all take DXF files.

Which led me to teach a class here at AU, one time, on how to go from Revit to CNC Direct. Why? Because in Revit, if my object is actually the right size-- it's an actual, accurate object, like a gusset for steel plates, or like GIB wallboard panels-- I can actually export. I can cut the GIB wallboard with a 4-by-8 grid. And the doors, and the receptacles, and the windows, and all the cuts in the geometry will actually export out as individual DXF files. The only thing we had to write was a little thing that said if-- I pick eight objects and export as a DXF, normally, I get one file with eight objects in it. No good. I need eight files. Got it? Makes sense? All right. So we wrote a little program and it exported eight separate files. Then all you have to do is take those files and turn them to absolute 2D. So in other words, flatten them. Like flat command in AutoCAD.

So you flatten them. And now I have something that my CNC router can cut. And you literally barcode those things, right? Barcode them, send them out to the job site. Somebody scans them in with BIM 360 Field. That one goes there. That one goes there. That one goes there. And they just install. There's no more snapping lines, no more cutting boards. Holes are the perfect diameter, in the right spot. Cool stuff, right?