Inventing the Civil World-Inventor for AutoCAD Civil 3D and InfraWorks Users

JERRY BERNS: Thank you for your patience, everyone. Jerry Berns here to present to you class number--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

JERRY BERNS: C123034-- Inventing the Civil World. Again, my name is Jerry Berns. I'm the manufacturing content manager at 4D Technologies CADLearning.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: And I'm Heidi Boutwell. I run the civil infrastructure side content manager for CADLearning.

JERRY BERNS: And I wanted to say welcome to everyone that traveled near or far. Here's a pin map of some of our attendees in class today, so thank you. Wow, some of you traveled quite a ways. This session will be interactive. Heidi, would you like to tell more about it?

HEIDI BOUTWELL: We get to be a demo session. It's wonderful. If you have a smartphone, a laptop, a pad, a tablet, whatever you're taking notes on, if you use any web browser-- Safari, Google Chrome, doesn't matter-- log in to the web address you see up there. You will be able to follow along with the slides that we have. You'll be able to take notes on the slides and email the notes home, which is awesome.

And we're going to have some interactive questions, as well. And as we come to those slides, you'll be able to follow along, click on the slide interaction answer that you want. And we'll get a good idea of how our demographic is in this wonderful room. So just give you guys a few seconds here to log in before we continue on. Notice, it also allows you to chat with other members that are logged in and ask questions.

I used something similar to this at UNT earlier this year. I'll tell you what, this was the best thing I'd ever seen as an audience member. I wanted to ask questions of a panel. Instead of raising my hand with 500 other people, I put it in the chat or the ask questions area, and believe it or not, my question got answered, because I was able to get it in line.

JERRY BERNS: We'll be checking those questions before the end of our session. Oh, yeah, I've got to talk with that, don't I? So we'll be checking those questions periodically, but we'll try to do all the questions at the end of the session. All right, so today's class, what are we going to cover? How to use Inventor LT or Inventor to create parts for the Infrastructure Parts Editor. That's one of our class objectives, using Inventor to make parts for that.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: And then after Jerry's done talking and showing you guys awesome Inventor, I'm going to take over and I'm going to show you Infrastructure Parts Editor. How many of you guys know about Infrastructure Parts Editor? All right, you are in the right class. Let me tell you, now, everybody says, we're going to debut it. We are not only debuting it. We are going to show you how it works. We're going to give you the tips and the tricks for running this little program.

But in order to run the program and go through the best practices, editing, and how to create parts and publish them, you actually have to know how to use Inventor, which is why Jerry here.

JERRY BERNS: So, we're going to be demonstrating Inventor, InfraWorks, maybe Civil 3D. So if this is not the right class for you, please, feel free, get up, excuse yourself, if you think there's another class that would better fit you.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: And we swap mics.

JERRY BERNS: Over the shoulder.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: You got it?

JERRY BERNS: Up and over?

HEIDI BOUTWELL: Yeah.

JERRY BERNS: OK, so no one's leaving. Excellent.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: Yes. So our first question poll for the day, our first poll question. If you're actually logged in, you should be seeing this up there. You should be able to select which Autodesk product have you used the most? That let's us kind of get a gauge of who's actually sitting in this room. Are you in Inventor user? Do you use Civil 3D only and InfraWorks only?

To be honest, until Infrastructure Parts Editor came out, I never used Inventor. I knew of it. I've opened it, like, maybe twice. But until this product actually came to market, never touched it my life.

JERRY BERNS: So, Heidi, right now, we're getting about 73% of you using InfraWorks Civil 3D.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: Awesome.

JERRY BERNS: And about 4% have used Inventor.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: That's good.

JERRY BERNS: That's the fit that we were looking for for this class.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: Yes. My whole point was when I talked to Jerry about doing this joint class together, I said, Jerry, we've got this great, brand-new program. Came out for InfraWorks first, then Civil 3D. And the one thing that every civil doesn't know that we need to know is Inventor, right? Nobody knows how to run Inventor as a civil, because most of us don't have it in our class. I will say about 25% of the people I've met so far as civils have used Inventor. Only 25%. The rest of us don't.

And our next question, before Jerry gets started, have you done any 3D modeling in AutoCAD Civil 3D? That type of modeling. I'm not talk about put out a gravity pipe network on a profile, that type of 3D modeling. I mean you've made solids. You've joined them together and unioned them. You've dimensioned them. You used Boolean expression parametric modeling using AutoCAD or Civil 3D. Have you done that?

JERRY BERNS: Survey says?

HEIDI BOUTWELL: Wow, almost a split room.

JERRY BERNS: Just about a split room.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: Wow.

JERRY BERNS: We're right at 50-50 there.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: I am amazed. More than everybody.

JERRY BERNS: It doesn't it tell us how many have responded.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: That's fine.

AUDIENCE: There's a total of 32 people.

JERRY BERNS: Excellent.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: Today, we're going to be creating a part based on the sketch. This comes from Oklahoma City. I worked in Oklahoma City for five years. I worked for several different civil engineering firms up there. And the biggest complaint I heard from my PEs at the time was we cannot create a catch basin with flumes in Part Builder. And that's a catch basin actually has additional flumes where the catch basin never changes sizes. It just adds flumage, left or right, or both at the same time.

And this is their standard. They use this all throughout the city. Usually, you'll just see a two-flume catch basin in Oklahoma City, but you do run into a three, four, five, six, depending on if it's necessary. So this is the sketch that we actually used, and we will be showing you in Inventor on how to do it. And notice it's rebar. It's all rebar. There is not one sketch that Oklahoma City gives you that says, this is it, and the outside dimensions with concrete.

So we're taking all of our dimensions from this, and we're putting it into Inventor. And then we're going to transfer it into Infrastructure Parts Editor. We're going to export it out of there as a publish, and we're going to put it into at least InfraWorks.

JERRY BERNS: So two more slides after that one.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: Now, just to give you a little bit of a better idea, you know, zoom in on the sketch of what's really going on. Notice that it's all rebar based. We have exterior/interior dimensions. We have wall thicknesses. We have a flume top with a grate inlet that sits inside of it. So we have some different cross-sectional ideas of-- this is how it came. As you look at that PDF, Jerry got confused. I had to really look at that PDF and go, OK, which part of this PDF goes together?

Because you're trying to take a three-dimensional object that you see every day, and it's cut into 2D. And you're trying to put that all together back into a 3D in Inventor. And this is our flume, and our flume grows. The more flumes, the bigger the vault gets. And the vault is over here on the far left. So as you expand out, that vault has to get deeper and deeper. And that's one of the things that we've figured out, which is awesome. Now, for Jerry's show.

JERRY BERNS: And back to that point, one of the interesting things about that vault is that it grows. It gets deeper. As the flumes increase, the vault has to get longer. So there's a relationship between those. So we have to teach that in Inventor, that these two features talk to each other. So we'll be demonstrating that.

Quick overview, again, I saw that there's very little Inventor experience. Again, this is the right audience. This is what we were expecting. So for the Inventor overview, what is it? It's a parametric modeling tool, meaning that the dimensions are in charge of the geometry. If you change the dimension value, it changes the length of that line arc circle.

Has anybody done parametrics in AutoCAD, used the parameters? OK, same concept. Change the dimension, it changes the line arc per circle or the extrusion or the revolve or the loft. The dimensions are in charge. You can build dimensional relationships. I've dimensioned this with A. I've got a dimension B. B can look at A. If A changes, B can react. So you can build relationships between them.

Most of this is going to be built with sketches. From those sketches, we then create the features, what are called sketched features. They get created from the sketch. You're also going to see some placed features. Hole is a good example. You don't necessarily have to draw a circle ahead of time in Inventor. You can just say, drill a hole, or do this, place feature. So a quick overview of Inventor.

All right, so how do you use Inventor LT for creating those parts? Quick background. Going to show you some quick configuration and building up a template. I'm going to be using videos in here. Helps me to keep on time. I've got the live Inventor after class. If you need to see something live, we can do so. But just to help us stay on track, I'm going to be showing videos. Heidi, I believe you are going to be some live a little bit later on. So we'll see a mix here.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: So, before Jerry gets really started into his videos, we are going to do live. We're going to do live InfraWorks. And I really, really, really, really wanted to do a live Civil 3D, because that's the big thing everybody wants to see. I want to see you go into Civil 3D, right? That would be so awesome. The current version that we currently have will only export or publish shipped parts to Civil 3D. So you can modify a shipped part and publish it and update Civil 3D's catalog.

If you do what Jerry and I did-- make a brand-new part from scratch in Inventor and bring it in-- it will not publish to Civil 3D. This is a known bug. It got discovered about two weeks ago. We have informed Autodesk. They are working on beta after beta after beta. They've gone through, I think, 10 iterations now, and they still haven't got it fixed. But it's working. They're going to get it fixed. Charlie's on it. He really is.

So, therefore, we videoed everything to make sure it goes smoothly and it stays on track. So we're going to definitely do InfraWorks live at the end. I might be able to show you a little bit of Civil 3D with an existing part, where you add one size to it and publish it out that way. But it's the same process.

JERRY BERNS: So what I've recorded here is Inventor LT. This can work with Inventor, Inventor Pro. Inventor LT is going to be the more affordable package that I think you're going to use. You don't need to have the more powerful cable wire harness, dynamic simulation, FEA analysis. You don't need all that power. Inventor LT should be able to suit your needs for building the drainage structure components. So that's the one that we're going to be seeing in here.

Quick configurations. Head up to the File menu, go into the Options. I'd recommend jumping or bumping up the undo. If you make a mistake, you can set a limit how far back you can undo in Inventor. I'd recommend four mg. Bump that up. In the sketch, when you're sketching, I'm not a big fan of parallel and perpendicular constraints. I like horizontal/vertical. And when you start sketching, I like to have part origin 0, 0 projected into my sketch so I have that reference point. It's a favorite of mine.

These instructions are also in the handout, so if you missed it, it's available. Next up, templates. Again, think back to AutoCAD days. You don't want to go in there and make your layers every time, your dimension style every time, your text style. That's a waste of time. Inventor has templates. You can create one for the parts editor. Set it up so that you don't have to create these settings each and every time.

Inventor is interesting. When you start a new part and you're looking at the xy plane, what do you usually call that? What view is that when you're looking at the xy plane? Usually, the top view? Inventor's interesting. It calls it front. So I right-click on the cube and say, no, it's not the front view. It's going to be the top view. And then I'm going to save a home view from the top, front, right isometric view. Set that is the new home view.

And then save a copy as a template. And then, in homage to Project Chameleon-- anybody use Project Chameleon?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

JERRY BERNS: Yeah? I gave my folder the name Chameleon. And then go into that folder and save it. I gave it the name IPE-- Infrastructure Parts Editor. Now, when you go to create a new part, you can use that. You don't have to change the front view every single time. You don't change the home view every single time. You could have even put in some parameters so that you don't have to create those every single time. It's just some options.

So when you want to create a new part, you can either use the New button, go the Chameleon folder. You can either double-click it or use the Create button, and you're in. Now when you're looking at the xy plane, you're looking at the top of the part. Again, I'm old school. I started using Autodesk products back in 1985. You can do the math. It's been awhile. I like xy being top view. So I set that up.

Here's another option. You can expand the panels here on the home page and have an easier access to that. Saves on a couple of clicks if you modify the home panel to get to it. And again, we're in, making a part. All right, so with the configuration set, template is set, time to make that first component with Inventor. I'm going to be creating the vault first, the underground structural component.

We're going to set up the parameters, and then we're going to build some features, such as an extrusion, a shell. We'll add some more objects here. Towards the end, we'll set up some feature properties and test the configurations of that vault with its different left-hand, right-hand number of flumes. So here we go. Start up those parameters.

There's an FX button up at the top. When you select on that, you'll open up the parameters dialog box. Inventor is keeping track of all those dimensions that you create when you're sketching. If you know you're going to need parameters ahead of time, you can create what are called user parameters. So here, I'm going to create one called splength. We'll be talking about that a little bit more. Right now, all you need to know is that I'm going to be using it later on to do some table matching. That's splength.

There's another parameter that we need to use in Parts Editor, and that's the structure port width, so spwidth. Set that one up. Because I'm doing the vault, I want to set up information about the characteristics of some of the components in it. And the first one I'm going to put in next-- or the next one I'm putting in-- flume length. What is the length of each of those flumes? And that's a fixed value. Add in comment. Bear with my typing. Go, go.

Then, we're putting in the flume quantity. This is where you'll be able to specify whether we're going to have two, three, four, five, six, how many flumes are going to be in this component. And what's interesting about this is that it's not going to be a dimension. It's going to be a value. And there's a subtle difference between a dimension. It's not in inches or feet. It's just a value. It's unitless. And we'll see that a little bit later.

Here, I'm putting in the parameter for the FlumeRightHand. Is this going to be on the left-hand side or the right-hand side? So I'm putting a parameter in here to control that. Now I'm keying these. If it's keyed, we're going to see this dimension appear later when we are exporting. If I choose the export column, it means that I also need this out there in Parts Editor. Generally, you can key everything and comment-- excuse me, key it and export it.

Here, I'm making the multivalue. I want this flume quantity be unitless, and I want it to store the numbers two, three, four, five, and six. That's how many flumes are going to be in here. And it changes from just the number to a list mode. I'm doing the same things for the FlumeRightHand. I'm getting one inch, and I'm putting in zero, one. Has anybody done any programming? Zero, one, true, false, that concept. Is this going to be left side or right side, zero or one?

So now I can see this list of numbers that I can select from. So I've got the parameters typed, turned them into unit list, made them multivalue, got my comments, got them keyed, got them exported. Parameters are built.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: One thing about the comments. If you add comments in that area, it will appear in IPE when you hover over the cells. So if you need to be more specific to remind yourself what that dimension was for, put it in the comment column so you can see it later.

JERRY BERNS: In Inventor, it's good, because you'll get a model from somebody else, and what does this parameter do? Leave a little breadcrumb behind so you know what the intention was for that parameter. So with the parameters built, now we're ready to make our first extrusion. I'm still using the template here. I still have those parameters available to me.

So I'm going to go in and start a sketch. I'm going to start on the xy plane, the ground plane. Don't be worried that it's standing up vertical. It's still the ground plane to me. I'm going to go in and use a two-point center. Now, in Inventor, zero tends to start in the middle of the screen. AutoCAD users, you may used to it being in the lower left. Zero's in the middle.

So I'm doing a two point or a center rectangle. Pick the center, move out, and I'm going to put in my parameters here. Underground structure length, uslength, equals. This is a term. It's used by the Parts Editor. It's got a whole list of reserved parameters that you can use in your Inventor parts. So I put in uslength. I put in uswidth. Stop the sketch. Look at it from the top.

Then, I'm going to use the extrude command, turn it into a solid. Select what's going to be extruded. This is going to be an underground, so I wanted to extrude down. I'm going to create another parameter here, usheight. And I set its initial value at 29 inches. So those parameters that I typed into my sketch and when I was extruding, now they're in here under the model parameters-- uslength, uswidth, usheight.

Now it's time to put some more intelligence on that usheight. I want to build this equation, as I said. As the number of flumes increase, the vault has to get taller. So I build a relationship in here that's based upon the number of flumes. Multiply that by 1 and 1/16 inch and then add it to the base height of 29. Sometimes, when you're doing some traction in here, you'll have to put in UL, unitless. If that text is in red, that's a bad equation. It has to turn black. Think economics. If you're in the red or if you're in the black, black is good.

So with that, the equation's set up, the first box built. While I was developing the course, I had copied my text from Inventor, put it over in my Word document. I was practicing later, and I took it from the Word document and put it back into Inventor, and the equation was red. What's going on? I know that worked. Watch out. If you take equations or you're working on some tutorials and you get it out of a PDF, watch out for hyphens that have turned into en dashes.

That will scratch your head for a little while, when I was trying to figure out-- it's a minus. No, it's not a minus. It's an en dash. Watch out. If you're using through a tutorial, watch out for those little gotchas. It's got to be a hyphen, folks, not an en dash. Word likes to change those on you, so a little tip there.

All right, let's hollow out the box. Let's get this vault hallowed. So, shell. This is one of those placed features that I talked about earlier. Come on. Here we go. No sketching required. I start the shell command. I pick what face do I want to-- when we think about Inventor and the mechanical world, we're going to machine through that face. And right now, that wall thickness is 0.1 inch.

Well, another parameter, wall thickness. I'm creating a wall thickness equals six, and it's now six inches thick all the way around, including the bottom. But sometimes, you have to have a custom base thickness, I understand. You can add a unique thickness on the bottom face. Now, just to show you here, I'm going to put in base thickness parameter equals two. Did you see it get thinner at the base? Now if I go change it to six, it moves.

So I've got two parameters controlling the walls. I've got a perimeter controlling the base. Parameters are controlling the model. And it's hollow. I've seen other example parts where they made a sketch and did an extrude cut to cut into that to make it hollow. Both works. I've used shell. I've used extrude cut. Your choice, folks.

Some work features. Because the flume is angled, I want to make sure that it's going at a constant angle. So we're going to put in some work features in here. I'm going to add a work plane and a work axis. So I'm using the plane command. Roll the part over, pick the face, and I pick an edge that I want to act as a hinge. And this needs to have a seven-degree slope. So I type in seven, changes the angle. And you can see it.

Now, to create this flume on the side, it's going to be three, four, five, six. How far away that's going to extrude from this wall, that's going to be based upon a parameter. So I'm creating another work plane that's going to control the side of the vault where that flume is. And I'm going to say that this is going to be based on the flume length times the number of flumes. How many flumes are in here?

But I don't want to have a flume if I only have two. If I'm at three, I need to have a flume. If I'm at four, five, six, anything greater than two, I need to have the flume. So I do some math in here-- flume quantity minus two. So if I ever have just two flume configuration, two minus two, zero. Nothing. It puts that work plane right on the side, which means I don't need it.

Now what I'm building up is an axis, where those two planes intersect with each other. I need to know where that seven-degree slope intersects with that side of the flume. So I created a work axis between those two. All right. Now to build the loft. This is where it starts getting a little more interesting.

Show of hands, how many has done loft command in AutoCAD? You made some exotic shapes? Yeah, OK. So I'm going to start with a sketch. A loft needs at least two sketches. So I'm sketching on the side of the original vault. I'm going to use it a two-point rectangle. And when you're sketching, watch for the green dot. That tells you you're locked on. You won't see endpoint like AutoCAD snapping. You'll see a green dot that says you're locked on.

And then I went down to the bottom. Stay away from the midpoint. If you lock on to the midpoint, you will not be able to change the width. Next, I'm adding a dimension to tell it how wide that is. I need a seven-inch opening, plus I need to know the front and back wall thicknesses. So seven plus, look up a parameter, wall thickness times two. It's using a parameter. If the wall thickness changes, this feature, this sketch will update.

I'm going to go back and turn on the work plane that I turned off earlier. I'm going to sketch on this. So now, the rectangle that I've already made, I need to know where that rectangle-- if it was projected onto this new work plane, where would that look like? So I'm using the project geometry command to project those edges over, and I need to know where that slope intersects with that vertical face.

Now I can create a rectangle that uses that geometry. I'm going to lock onto the intersection here. Come on, don't be shy. Lock on. There you go. Voice controlled. With that sketch in place, again, it's all tied to the sketch geometry. If the sketch geometry changes, that'll update. Now we start the loft.

Generally, order doesn't matter. I could have picked the outside, then the inside next to the vault. I tend to like to work from where the existing material is, working out. Loft. With that complete, we can turn off the visibility of the work features. Hide the axis. It's starting to look like a vault with a flume. Yet, there's not a whole lot of water going to get into that.

So we're going to do another shell. What face do I want a machine through? Oops, first, parameter. Again, I want to link it back to that other shell that's using wall thickness. So cut through the top, cut through the inside, and now the water can get into the main section. And go.

With that, we're going to have to need a configuration that lets me flop it over to the other side, a mirror image of it-- left hand, right hand. We've got a mirror tool for doing that. So I go to my Pattern panel, select the Mirror command. And interesting about this is I want to mirror the entire solid, not just the flume side of it. It was much easier to just say take the entire solid, Inventor, and mirror it.

And mirror it on the xy plane. That's why I sketched on zero, zero, so I've got a mirror plane going right through the middle of the part, really easy to find. And remove the original. I don't want to have a T shape, though I understand that you do make some T shapes once in a while. Those are interesting. Didn't need it for this example. It's either going to be left or right, not T. Maybe next year, right? So with the mirror complete.

Next, feature properties. This is where we start to use those multivalue parameters that I created. I want this to know that if it's three, four, five, or six, if it's on the left-hand side, if it's on the right-hand side, what needs to not happen? What if I go down to two? I don't need to have that shells and I don't need to have that loft. So I'm going into the mirror command, and I'm telling it to suppress the mirror feature if FlumeRightHand, that parameter-- which operator do you want-- equals zero.

If FlumeRightHand is equal to zero, then do not mirror this part. Because I had it already set at zero, it turns off the mirror right away, and it puts it back to the left-hand side. Now what I'm telling it is if I have a flume quantity of two-- in other words, less than three. If flume quantity is less than three, do not create the loft. Same thing for the shell. Don't forget the shell or you will get errors. If the flume length-- excuse me, flume quantity is less than three, then it also needs to be suppressed, turned off.

Time to test the configurations. So we go back into our parameters. And there's a more or less button in the corner that you can use. You can collapse this so it's not quite so wide. I'm going to scroll down here to my flume quantity. And what would it look like if I had four? Well, it'd get longer and taller. If I've got five? Longer and taller. What if I have six? Same thing.

What if I need a right-hand side? Excuse me, two. Notice that I turned off the loft and the shell when I went down to two? Now switch it over to the right-hand side sweep. Done. So I'm just turning on and off those features based upon parameters that I've set in the model. And you couldn't do this in Part Builder, could you? No.

Very powerful, being able to leverage the intelligence of Inventor for modeling your components and being able to put those now into InfraWorks and Civil. With the configurations tested, time to mark those new parameters that we created while making the sketches, while we were making the shells.

We have to key in export. Again, keying it says that this is going to appear in the preview, the sketch preview, when we're getting ready to export. And the export column says this is going to show up in IPE. It's going to show up in the Parts Editor. So we're just going through, flagging all of these that need to be keyed, which ones need to be exported. Add in some comments. And folks, I'm going to speed this up a little bit, because you don't need to see all of that typing. Typing in some comments here.

So the key parameters, the important parameters, that need to be used by Parts Editor are keyed and exported and then those comments so we can see those out there, also. I went in here and told it to use concrete, set the material. Wasn't a big fan of the concrete that Inventor uses, so I switched over to the Autodesk material library. In there, they had something called gray-- was it broomed? Yeah, flat broomed gray. Looked more like concrete to me.

And that'll show up inside of InfraWorks. You can see the brush strokes from the broom.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: One note about the materials. Not all the materials that you see here will appear in InfraWorks. A lot of them will come in white. So you'll have to play with, which materials that you can use. Jerry was running a test the other day. What'd you put 60 on a grate and only 10 of them showed up or something?

JERRY BERNS: Much less than I was expecting.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: Yeah. So just be cautious. I know copper works really well, and so does concrete.

JERRY BERNS: Those are good ones. Because we're building an assembly, we're going to be building a vault and a frame and a grate. It's time to put in the infrastructure information. We modeled the Inventor part. Now it's time to add the infrastructure intelligence to it. And the first thing that we're going to be putting in is the assembly connector, and we're going to be using the infrastructure part shape utilities.

If you install Inventor first and then you install Infrastructure Parts Editor, this should add into Inventor for you. If you get those out of order, not a big deal. There's a way to add that back in. So we switch to the infrastructure part shape utilities. We start the assembly connector. Again, here's one of those reserved command names that we need to use-- underground structure port. Type it as is, no variation. Got to use those names so that the components know how to talk to each other.

I'm going to pick the face that I want to use is the reference plane, and then I'm going to use the origin, the center point. I want the center of the vault. If this has got a three point or four point, I don't want it to find the center of that loop. There's an option in there to do that. I want it to always use zero at the center of this, not the center of when it's wide to six flumes. With the assembly connector in place, next up, get it exported.

Start the export. You can see the dimensions appear that were keyed. If they were a key, they appear in the preview. Name it. Export it. You'll see it blink and flash. It's done. Close.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: One note about exporting-- it will save over your original file with that new name that you just gave it. It doesn't do anything else. That's how you know it exported. So you have the original file name that you got all this way through. Before you go into Infrastructure Part Editing tool, please save your file. Go into Infrastructure Part Editing. When you hit Export, it will rename that file.

You'll have the originals still wherever you saved it, but then you'll have a new file with that. And you don't want to be editing that new file. It will mess up your ports, big time.

JERRY BERNS: So we talked to Autodesk about it. They're aware of that. It's probably not supposed to be saving like that, but at the moment, it is. So keep a backup copy if you need to. Next up, building the frame. Instead of going through all of it, at the end of the handout, there's a link to where you can get this data set.

This has already been modeled for you. So instead of going through modeling all of this, it's already been modeled. We'll just go through the keying and the exporting, or testing the configurations, too. So you will see that inside of here, when we go into the parameters, again, we've got several parameters set up. Those custom ones for the FlumeQuantity and FlumeRightHand. Again, if it's three, if it's four, the frame grows. If it's a right hand, it switches to the other side.

Good practice-- test your configurations. Make sure they all work. Scoot this along. Going through, marking which ones need to be keyed, which ones are going to be changing inside the Parts Editor or I need to edit in the Parts Editor. Exporting the others. I'm going to pause here.

You'll see several parameters in here-- D5, D6, D7. Those were made along the way. Don't need those. They don't need to be keyed. They don't need to be exported. Parts Editor doesn't need those. Leave those alone. Inventor needed them. Parts Editor doesn't. So move it along.

Assembly connector. This is the frame. Frame is going to be connecting to what? What's it going to connect to? It's going to connect to the underground structure, and it's also going to need to connect to--

HEIDI BOUTWELL: The grate.

JERRY BERNS: The grate or the cover. So assembly connectors, we're going to need two of them in this one. So again, back to the Environments, Infrastructure Part, Assembly Connector. I'm going to pause here.

Oh, didn't get it done in time. I was going to ask, what's the name here? This is going to connect on the bottom to the underground. So this is where the names have to match up. Underground structure port in the frame needs to match up with the underground structure port in the vault. And resume.

Rolled part over. Pick the bottom face for the plane. Selected for the reference. Yes. Right now, it's taking two picks to do that. I'm going to pick a point mode. Go the browser and, again, I'm going to use center point. That's for the bottom. That's where I'm going to have it lining up with the vault. The next one-- I have the apply there-- this is where the grate is going to line up on the frame. So I need to have an assembly connector for the grate.

So I need a name. Again, default name, grate or cover port. Ignore the extra one at the bottom that was supposed to be there. Grate or cover port, that's the name you need. Pick the top face for the reference plane. Zero. And again, I don't want to use the center point of loops. I like the point mode. I create a work point out here. You can either pick it out in the graphics window. You can go to the browser to pick the work point. That's not above zero, zero. It's offset from the underground structure, where the grate is sitting relative to the vault.

Assembly connectors are in place. Now the frame knows how to connect to the underground structure. It'll know how to connect to the grate. Reference points.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: That's mine.

JERRY BERNS: Heidi, you want to give a quick explanation on reference points?

HEIDI BOUTWELL: So, reference points. How many of you guys like your move grips and your rotation grips in Civil 3D? You can add those here, and the only place in Infrastructure Parts Editor that it will accept them is on the frame. The surface structure's the only one it'll accept them on. You can add up to five, P1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

You can make them either a move grip or a rotation grip or a move grip rotation axis combined grip. You could put them wherever you want. As you put them out there, they'll come up with a name-- P1, P2. And after the name, you put a space, and you enable what it is, whether it's a move grip or rotation grip or a combined.

Now, InfraWorks ignores everyone but P5. It will not mess with P1 through 4, believe it or not. P5, if it's on the frame, will replace the insertion point for InfraWorks. So if you get one out there, you type P5, and if you just want it for InfraWorks so you have an insertion point in a different location-- this is a curb in it, right? Do you think I want my insertion point where that grates attaching in the dead center? I want it back there on that ridge, because that's where it's going to hit the curb line, right?

So I'm going to put my P5 back there on that ridge. So that's very important. So reference points-- and like I said, move grip rotation axis. I only wanted one, because I need Civil 3D to recognize it as a combo grip. I could put them on the corners and have grip rotation all over the place. That'd be really interesting. But for ease of access, I'll just stick it in the middle and go from there.

JERRY BERNS: It found the midpoint of that edge. Hit OK, and the reference points are built. Again, InfraWorks doesn't use these as much as Civil 3D. These are more for Civil 3D. So if you were only going to use this in InfraWorks, I wouldn't even need to put in reference points, correct?

HEIDI BOUTWELL: That's right. You don't need them for InfraWorks unless you want to reposition that insertion point.

JERRY BERNS: Right.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: And you only need P5 if that's what you want to do.

JERRY BERNS: So here, folks, it's got the information in there for the assembly connectors. It's got the information for the reference points, if it's going to be used in Civil 3D. Again, we're just exporting it. I'm giving it a name. I'm hitting export. You get the idea. Moving on.

Time to build a grate. How many connectors do we need? Just one. It's the grate. It's the top. It's going to connect to the frame. So the process-- well, let's jump ahead here. Infrastructure. Reference. And again, those names must match. So this is the grate or cover. It's going to match up with the frame. So using the same name, again, grate or cover port.

Roll it over, pick the bottom. Set the reference. Zero is in between those two plates. Again, I'm telling it to use the center point. Interesting. This time, I needed to use the flip button. I needed to make sure that it was pointing down. I need the grate looking down at the frame. The frame needs to be looking up at the grate. For the underground structure, those two arrows need to be looking at each other.

So think about the direction of those grips. Which way should they be pointing? Or excuse me, those connectors. They need be looking at each other. Export. You get it by now? We're down. We put the information in for infrastructure. It's time to export that template. And speeding it up here. Export, export, export. Save, don't save, moving on.

Once you have got the models created, you've put in the infrastructure part shape utility information, you've exported it. If you go out to that folder, you're going to find these files. There's going to be in Inventor file out there and IPT. You're going to find an XML file for each of those, and you're going to find a couple of image files. These are going to be used by Parts Editor. So this is normal to see these files once the export is complete. How are we doing on time? 2:15? How's that for rocking?

I like this quote from Evan. "Lecturers should remember that the capacity of the mind to absorb is limited to what the seat can endure." Folks, get up. Stretch a little bit. Say hi to your neighbor.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: Yes, please. Introduce yourself to your neighbors.

JERRY BERNS: This is a long session.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: Take a moment. Just take a break.

JERRY BERNS: Take a moment.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: This is a long class, and we know it.

JERRY BERNS: If you're heading for the bathroom, be quick.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: You've got two minutes to use the bathroom and come back, grab water. Be back in two minutes and 13 seconds. So while you guys are mingling, we do want to let you know about a little prize that CADLearning's putting on.

JERRY BERNS: [INAUDIBLE]

HEIDI BOUTWELL: They're mingling. They've got, like, a few seconds left.

JERRY BERNS: Yeah, I know. I'm just--

HEIDI BOUTWELL: Get them all back in here.

JERRY BERNS: --waiting for them to settle in.

HEIDI BOUTWELL: You know you want to come back in and hear about this just briefly before we get started on the next section. So one of our workers at CADLearning decided that he wanted to raffle this off. It's seven inches by seven inches cubed. It's a 3D printer. Anyways, on your seat, you saw all these poker chips. If you go online-- and if you didn't get a poker chip, the web address is right there. If you sign up for a 30-day free trial-- it doesn't take anything, just sign up, no Visa card, no MasterCard, nothing-- you are automatically registered to win that. So that's enough. That's the only plug I'm doing.