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Autodesk Factory Design Utilities: Asset Development with Top Techniques

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説明

Developing a great set of assets for Autodesk Factory Design Utilities can be a challenge. In this class, we will discuss and demonstrate the top techniques used to create the most-functional factory assets.

主な学習内容

  • Learn about the capabilities and functionality of factory assets.
  • Review the top techniques used to maximize the factory asset functionality.
  • Discover the pitfalls and problems users often have while developing factory assets.

スピーカー

  • Charles Belcher さんのアバター
    Charles Belcher
    Rusty Belcher is a manufacturing application expert and senior consultant with IMAGINiT Technologies. He provides implementation, training, and support services for all Autodesk, Inc. manufacturing products. Rusty specializes in integrating 3D design practices into manufacturing production environments. He also works with reality capture laser scanning and photogrammetry to document real-world objects, translating them into viable 3D CAD designs. As an outstanding instructor and mentor, Rusty consistently receives excellent reviews for his impact at IMAGINiT Technologies. Rusty began his career as a structural steel fitter at Newport News Shipbuilding. He is a graduate of the Newport News Shipbuilding Apprentice School and worked in the shipyard's Mold Loft Engineering Division. Since joining IMAGINiT Technologies in 2000, Rusty has been dedicated to supporting the Autodesk Manufacturing solutions. In recent years, his primary focus has been on the Autodesk Factory Design Utilities. Rusty collaborated directly with Autodesk to develop and author the original Factory Design Suite software training courseware and has created numerous tips and tutorial videos available on the Factory Design Suite software’s YouTube channel. He is also a regular presenter at the acclaimed Autodesk University, where he frequently receives outstanding reviews.
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      Transcript

      RUSTY BELCHER: Welcome, everybody, to "Autodesk Factory Design Utilities and the Asset Development Top Techniques." My name is Rusty Belcher. I'm a senior application expert working with IMAGINiT Technologies. I'll be going through the presentation with you today. I've been using the Factory Utilities, really, since before they were out. I was counting earlier. It seems like it's about 14 years I've been generating assets for this application. And I'm looking forward to sharing with you some of the top techniques that I use to create assets.

      I want to review the agenda today. First, welcome. I want to make sure everyone is comfortable and ready to go. But the first thing we're going to do today is really focus on the capabilities and functionalities of Factory Assets. Some of you are probably new to the Factory Design Utilities, even though they've been out for a while. And some of you have probably used them a lot over the past decade or so. So we just want to make sure we're all on the same page as what is possible to do with an asset.

      After we review the capabilities, we're then going to focus on the techniques that were used to develop these assets, and specifically, the techniques that you as an asset publisher should feel comfortable with when you're creating assets. Along the way, we want to cover problems and pitfalls. It's just better to know this stuff and the limitations of the software up front. That way, you don't run into it later on during a time crunch.

      So this is an Autodesk University presentation, so I'm obligated to put my learning objectives on the screen. So here they are. We're going to learn about the capabilities and functionality of Factory Assets. We're going to review the top techniques used to maximize the Factory Asset functionality. And we will discover the pitfalls and problems users often encounter while developing Factory Assets.

      So let's get started reviewing the capabilities and functionalities of Factory Assets. If you ask me, assets usually fall into two categories, static assets and dynamic assets. So what do I mean by static? Well, these are simple, standalone models that represent the piece of machinery or equipment or the pallet on the ground. These assets do not change size. There is no configuration built into them, no parametric-- no parameters, no parametric configurations that exist. They just are simple models.

      Dynamic assets are just the opposite. Every time you drop a dynamic asset in, you're going to want to change its parameters, like length, width, height, thickness, and so on. You can see the walls and the conveyors and the ductwork and the cable trays, the raised walkways and the stairs. Those things are parametric, and they change. I never drop them in the same way twice.

      Now, I get to my first pitfall here when we talk about assets and functionality. And that is static assets, like the forklift and the chair and the copier and the pallet-- you can go grab those models from anywhere. Go up to GrabCAD. Grab a model. Bring it into Inventor. I usually like to get it to a single part file, do simplification, but get it in there and publish it. You're ready to go.

      Dynamic assets-- you're going to have to model those in Inventor, and you might as well think from scratch. I'm going to model that thing in Inventor, and I'm going to include all the parameters and all the sketches and dimensions along the way to make the asset as functional as it needs to be when the end user creates it. So that's the big difference between static and dynamic assets.

      Now, when it comes to functionality, we really-- we want to focus a lot on just the ease of use. These assets should snap together via the connector. So when you publish an asset, you add a connector in a logical location, and you can easily assemble your assets. You don't have to worry about all the constraints, everything. The asset's going to land on the floor, and you just drag it close to the other one, and it automatically snaps together.

      And then assets can also chain, not just connect together, but follow a pre-existing line in a sketch. Now, I'm going to jump back and forth between my PowerPoint and Inventor here. And I wanted to focus on assets that connect and chained assets really quickly.

      So I've got an asset already positioned. I'm just going to copy this and paste it off to the side. And you see that when I place an asset, it lands on the floor automatically. And when the asset gets close to its counterpart, you see that green connector snaps it into position.

      Well, that's amazing. That's what we want our asset to do. If I paste another one, just drag it over and snap it in place with no trouble at all. So those green connectors are an important aspect of publishing an asset, and putting those connectors in a logical location is important.

      Now, I also-- if I zoom out a little bit, I've got a sketch line down here. So this is an assembly, and I've got an assembly sketch. And I'm going to go to my system assets and really, the conveyor category. I'm just going to go to the belts.

      And you're going to see here that this first asset has a unique little indicator on it. That's a chained asset. That's an asset that was published for asset chaining. And the way this works is you drag this asset out and you select the sketch line. And you simply right-click and select Done, click OK, and you let all of the automatic work in the background go on. Inventor is going to load the assets to follow that specific sketch line.

      Now, you're going to see a couple of them colored independently. You see your normal assets, your typical assets, stacked end to end, but when you get to a unique link or, in some cases, a unique curve, that asset will be denoted in red. So if you want your assets to follow the line, you can develop what are called chained assets. And we'll focus on that a little bit later in our presentation.

      Assets can also have variants. These are predefined configurations that are built into the asset so that you don't have to waste a lot of time tweaking the parameters to get the configuration that you want, like specific links of conveyors or specific configurations of a shelving unit.

      And then assets can also have connector classes. That little green connector can actually pass information back and forth between assets.

      So let's take a look at that. I want to look at asset variance real quick. So I was looking at this stack of students sitting at a desk. And I thought, hey, let me hop up here to the Asset Browser. And I'm going to look up a desk.

      So here is the desk unit I want. And by the way, wherever possible, in this presentation today, I tried to use assets that you should be able to go to your Asset Browser, and you should be able to type in this information, and these assets should be publicly or globally available to you if you wanted to work along with this presentation.

      So this particular asset-- if I right-click on-- well, first off, you'll notice the number two here in the corner, that blue two. That's an indicator that this asset has variants. And if I right-click on it, I can choose the asset variant. In this case, I want to pick the variant that doesn't have a person sitting at the seat.

      So I do that, and when I drag this one out, this asset doesn't have the person sitting at the desk, where the others do. It's really nice to have a preconfigured-- well, a preset configuration that you can choose whenever you want it.

      Now, I mentioned also connector class properties. So here, here's a typical asset. This is the hauler. This is what you have to type in, "hauler," if you want this one. This is a truck hauler. And I have a parameter over here for body color. And I'm just going to set that to dark red. And I'll click the little Update button. And you can see how that works. And that's pretty nice.

      Well, a connector class property would allow that data to pass to a similar asset. So I can come in, and if I connect the car to the truck, it inherits the property from the truck via that connection.

      And it works both ways. If I select the truck and, for instance, change maybe the accent color to yellow, and then maybe the text color-- I might want to change that to white. And then if I update the car, it's going to update the truck as well because they're connected together. And it assumes that those bits of information would be the same for both assets. So connector classes are something that is wonderful to utilize if you can.

      Well, let's go ahead and jump back over, and let's take a look at assets with forms and also iLogic, so assets with forms and iLogic. And what really-- forms are a part of iLogic. But assets can have forms.

      So I have a couple of assets that instead of going down and filling out all the parameters necessary for the design you want, you can have a preconfigured form to make the interaction between you and the asset a lot easier. And again, this does work with iLogic, but forms are very easy. You really don't have to do any programming to do a form.

      But you can use iLogic. Many of my assets are built upon rules. If I change this, I want these things to change automatically. And iLogic is a great way to enforce rules or rules-based design inside of your asset.

      So a couple of examples I've got here for forms are this lifeboat. Now, this is one-- I didn't do this one. I didn't publish it. I republished it. But if I select this lifeboat, in the Factory properties, I get a Form button. I can click that, and I get a secondary dialog to help me set up the asset the way it needs to be. In this case, I'm just going to put it at a 60-degree launch angle. And then I could say it's on the port or starboard side of the boat, or I could actually lower the boat if I want to here.

      But real quickly, the form allows me access to all the parameter data I need to generate the asset. And I don't have to go through the Factory Properties dialog to do that.

      Another example would be this bulkhead. I work a lot in the maritime industry with shipyards, so here's a structural bulkhead. It's just a piece of plate with some T bars welded to it. But it also has a form built into it.

      So if I come up here and say, hey, I want this to be 42 foot long, I want it to be 10 foot tall-- so in the form, I can just type that in directly. I want the angles on the ends of the bulkhead so that if it hits the shell of the ship, I can do that. Close that out there. Should update there. There we go.

      I can also go to different tabs. I could adjust the stiffener. In this case, I think what I want to do is adjust the spacing. So I'm going to adjust the spacing there for a second. Just hit Enter and watch the spacing on the bulkheads update.

      And then I got to go walk through the bulkheads so I can go to the hatch. And I can turn on a hatch. If I turn on a hatch, you see it there. And then I can show what stiffener I want that hatch to appear at. And I can move that hatch inboard or outboard.

      Now, listen, later on in the class, we'll talk more about why this is so nice, but having a predefined form to do a complex asset-- it's just a godsend to the end user. It just makes their life so much easier. So you can do a lot with assets. Our goal here was just to review some of the capabilities.

      Now, the next thing we want to focus on is the top techniques that we utilize to create those assets. So let's take a look at that.

      So before I get started, I'm going to tell you this is the majority of the presentation, is focusing on these different techniques. And there's a lot of techniques, but I don't want you to get concerned. I don't want you to sit there and say, oh, I've never simplified anything or I've never marked a parameter key before or I don't know anything about multi-body or iLogic-- stop.

      Don't worry about that. You got time. You can focus on these techniques in turn. Hopefully, everyone's got either some training budget or at least the desire to get up and learn more about the application. So if you see a technique in here that you don't understand, it's just an opportunity for you to invest some time and get familiar with that technique and incorporate it into the assets that you're going to create.

      I'll also say this now and at the end of the presentation. Listen, there's a lot of techniques here, and you don't have to know them all to do an asset. It's very rare that one asset requires almost every one of these techniques. Most assets are quite simple, and you only need one or two of these techniques. You don't need all of them.

      But let's go ahead and dive in and take a look at the top techniques that we used to develop the assets you just saw. So the first thing I'm going to talk about is a checklist for publishing. Listen, this class is not a step by step by step recreation of asset publishing. I actually did that AU class.

      You're going to see in my presentation-- many times, you're going to see this orange link here. This orange link in this case is to remind me to tell you that, hey, if you want to know everything there is, a step-by-step process for publishing assets, I did an AU class for that already, and you can go watch that at AU Online. The link for that is in the handout.

      But what is an asset publishing checklist? Well, listen, there's a lot of things to remember when you publish an asset, and it just helps to have a checklist to remind you to check these things as you go through. Let's face it. Your asset publishing process needs to be reliable and repeatable, and the checklist just makes that so much easier.

      You print this thing out. You leave it by your desk. And every asset you create-- you just go through, and you address each of these check boxes. And between you and me, a lot's changed since 2015. That AU class I did was in 2015, so what you're seeing on the screen is my updated asset development checklist.

      You need to remember, too, that your assets are going to be completely different than the guy in the building across the street, all right? Their assets are going to be different than yours, so your asset development checklist is going to reflect your unique needs and capabilities for the asset.

      And also, the checklist is always evolving. Autodesk is always adding new features to the Factory Design Utilities, so as those new features appear, they'll need to find a place in the checklist if you're going to utilize them.

      As far as techniques go-- now, listen, I also should say this. I didn't put these in any kind of order. It's not like a David Letterman top 10 list, all right? There's not one technique that's any more important than the others.

      Well, except for this one, parameters. If you're going to develop assets, you're going to need to feel at home in that Parameter dialog box. When you make a part, you go to the Parameter table-- you're going to need to basically everything about that particular dialog. You're going to need to know all the ways to name your parameters, what's the difference between a name parameter and a user parameter. You need to know how to make multi-value parameters.

      Here's one a lot of you might not know-- a binary parameter. What's that? Well that's a multi-value parameter that's just a 1 or a 0. That's all that is. That's very useful in asset development. You saw me use that a minute ago when I was putting the hatch in the bucket.

      But there's also text parameters and true false parameters. Those parameters were introduced to support iLogic, and you usually use text and true false parameters for an iLogic rule.

      But then there's also key parameters. When you're making an asset, you mark your parameters key so that they appear later in the publishing process, and exporting your parameters to iProperties. It's a great way to make sure that your parameters are available as metadata moving on in the design. You never know where your assets are going to get used, so having your exported parameters available for downstream use is always an advantage.

      The next technique I'll focus on is simplification. I can't tell you how many times I've gone into a company, and they say, hey, we're ready for the Factory Design Utilities. We've been modeling our machines for years. We've got all of our machines modeled. This company builds these machines, and they're proud of it. And they want to use the Factory Utilities to put their machines in a proper order into somebody else's building.

      And I always got to grit my teeth. And I say, OK, listen. What you've done so far is a production-level design. Like, that machine is-- that's 800 individual parts that make up that machine. Listen, I cannot bring all 800 parts in every time you want to put that machine in a factory layout, so I need you to simplify this machine, probably, if at all possible, down to a single part file. I'd like you to remove all the extraneous features and make it as simple and as lightweight as possible.

      So that's going to-- it's just a part of living in the world of Factory Assets. So it helps to know the Inventor Simplify command. The Simplify command I think was introduced a couple of years ago. It took over from the old Shrinkwrap command. It think it's known now as the command that launches the largest dialog box in Inventor's history.

      But the Simplify command is a wizard. You open up an assembly. You start the command. And the wizard will walk you through removing components that you don't want represented or removing features from the remaining parts. And there's all kinds of ways you can generate usually a single part file at the end of the process.

      But I want you to understand that that's not the only method for simplification inside of Inventor. Inventor also has the Simplify manual workflow. Let me share this with you real quick. A lot of people just don't know that this is even available.

      So back over in Inventor, you got to go to the Assemble tab. That's where you'll find the Simplify command. And if you expand the Simplification panel, you'll see these three commands, Simplify View, Define Envelopes, and Create Simplified Part. This is a three-step process. These three commands are used, and they represent the manual workflow for simplification.

      The Simplify View generates a Design View where you get to turn off all the parts that you don't need for the final representation of the design. Then you can define the remaining parts with envelopes. And what's nice here is you can use bounding boxes or bounding cylinders. Bounding cylinders are quite useful, and they're not available in the regular Simplify command.

      Finally, when you're done, you can create your simplified single part file. And then you're really not done then. You can open up the simplified part, and you can adjust it and make it look as close to the original model as possible.

      Back over in PowerPoint, I've got a couple of links here I want to focus on for a minute. The Simplify command, all right? The best place to learn about that, in my opinion, for Factory Design users, is to actually go to the Autodesk Learning area. And they have an Autodesk Learning platform called Integrated Factory Modeling. And inside of that, they do a fantastic job of looking at the Simplify command. So definitely, you want to check out that link in your handout.

      And then a couple of weeks ago, I actually posted a video on my YouTube site for using the manual simplification workflow. I give that demo a lot, so I finally recorded it, put it up on my YouTube page, so there's a video If you're interested in utilizing the manual simplification process. And you'll see that it's a little bit different.

      I like to say it's like the mama bear, baby bear, papa bear scenario. Sometimes you got too much detail, or sometimes you've got not enough detail, and sometimes it's just right. So there you go.

      So let's move on. I've got a lot to cover, and my time restriction here is not the best. But those connectors-- let's focus on those, those little connectors you saw earlier. That's going to be a critical part, a critical technique that you're going to need to learn.

      You're going to need to learn where you can place your connectors. And I've got that listed here. I'm not going to delve too deeply into those. Most of us have got that part down.

      But here in the past few years, I've noticed something with conveyors, specifically, I wanted to focus on. And that is the location of the connector often limits the functionality of the asset.

      So let me show you what I mean. Here, I'm going to hop back over to Inventor. And I've got some conveyor assets over here. Here's the typical straight belt conveyor. I'm just going to copy-paste one in here. And I'm going to connect them together.

      Now, you notice how the connectors are at the top of the conveyor. Well, OK, this is going to assume that the height is consistent. If I adjust the height of one, the other one must follow suit.

      And that's great. That's how the assets come with the Factory Utilities. That's fine. But that does limit the functionality of the conveyor. What I have found here recently-- I've been working with a lot of package handling groups, and they like to stair step their conveyors. They like to just have it retreat in-- decrease in height as it rolls from one conveyor to the other. And if the connector is at the top, you can't do this. So where do you put the connector if you want adjustable heights?

      Well, I think the next best place for a connector is on the ground. And I have honestly started to put most of my connectors on the ground level. So again, I'm going to paste another one of these over here. I'm going to drag this one around. And I want you to notice something else about the connectors as I drag it. Notice my connectors have different colors. You don't have to use the same color all the time. A connector color might mean that it's only used in certain areas.

      So I'm just going to go and use the Connect command for this. And I want blue to go to blue. If you change your connector colors, then they can only snap to like colors.

      But what this does is it allows me to select this asset. And then I can come over here, and I can adjust its height to something different. Now, if I had done that with this version here, they would both have to update at the same time. So just placing the connector down on the floor makes these assets a bit more functional.

      I've run into this with office layouts where the cubicle walls have different heights, so it just naturally means the connector needs to go down on the ground instead of at the top. So that simple, little adjustment can make your assets a lot more versatile.

      Also, with connector color-- if you've never colored your connectors when you're publishing, right when you place the connector, you right-click on it. There's a factory option, and you can go in and apply the color that way. So if you have questions about that, you can learn about connector colors in the Factory Utilities Help dialog box.

      The next two techniques are really favorites of mine. But I want you, again, to understand you don't have to do this. It's just an option. So I am a member of my reality capture team at my company. And I don't go out in the field and do the scans. What I do is support the scans. I bring the scans, the point cloud scans, into Inventor, and I utilize them. That's my focus on the reality capture team.

      So here, you see assets that are actually scans of real-world objects. I'm not going to model anything. I've got the equipment. I'm going to take my scanner, go out and scan it. I'll bring it in. Usually, the process is fairly straightforward. You clean it up in ReCap, get rid of everything that's not the piece of equipment. You align the coordinate system. ReCap does that very good.

      And then you bring it into Inventor, and usually, you place a sketch underneath of it. Now, point clouds do not show up on the final drawing, so this sketch ends up to be the footprint of the asset. And this is what you'd see in a typical top-down view in your drawing.

      Now, you can either use a sketch, or you can use a sketch-- basically, lay a surface underneath of the asset, and the surface would be used to represent the asset when you drop it into your drawing view.

      I've got a couple of examples of this if I zoom out here for a second. Here, here's a tip. You guys get this because you're in my class today. In the Factory Design Utilities, if you go in and search for PC-- just remember point cloud, not the other one. PC, Point Cloud. That's what it stands for, right?

      So if you do a search on PC, you'll get a lot of the assets that I have published globally that utilize point clouds. So for instance, there's a building in here. I've demoed this a lot, so I need a building quickly to drop in. And I'll drop a building in place. And you can see even on this building, I went in, and I just-- from the top view, I traced the point cloud and I adjusted it and basically added a sketch and a surface underneath of this. So when this point cloud appears in my final layout, the building-- well, outline, actually, appears as well.

      But just like in the presentation, here's a Haas VFO CNC machine. I scanned that ages ago, so I can bring that in here as well. If you ever watch-- there's a video link on this one as well when we talk about how to make these things. There's a whole YouTube video about this. You'll see me go out and scan my truck and my wife's car. So there you go. So you can take these real-world objects, scan them, and bring them in as Factory Assets.

      Now, there's a couple of pitfalls here I want to make sure I cover. There is a 25 meg limit on the size of an asset if you're going to publish it globally. And point cloud assets do tend to be pretty large, but you can decimate it over in ReCap if you want to.

      And then, again, be aware of what the cloud-- the cloud will not show up in a drawing view. Only the 2D footprint will show up. So if you're going to an isometric view, you're not going to see the point cloud in Inventor's drawing environment.

      My other favorite technique-- again, it's my personal favorite is, I like point clouds, and I like mesh models. A lot of times I get put into weird situations where I need a model of something like a cow. And there's just no easy way to model a cow in Inventor.

      So what I do is I go up to SketchUp. They've got the 3D Warehouse, got millions of mesh models. I go find a cow. And then you can see my process. I bring it into 3ds Max. 3ds Max can open up those SketchUp models. And then you export an OBJ over to Inventor.

      Now, there is a little pitfall here in that a lot of mesh models have an issue with scale. And when you're coming out of 3ds into Inventor, there is an option to scale the mesh up or down. So if you're going to use this process, if you're going to try this, you're going to want to know the size of the mesh, what it should be when you get finished. And you're going to incorporate that scale factor when you're bringing it into Inventor from 3ds Max.

      Here, I just-- let's see. Let's hop over here. I've had a couple of customer calls in the past year for people doing corrals or paddocks at a rodeo. And they have these fences. So here's a preview of what's coming up in one of the other techniques here. I put some I put some iMates on my assets so I can snap these things together.

      So they're not connectors These are iMates. We'll get to this-- we'll get to that page in the PowerPoint a little bit. But what this does is it allows me to just make the corral here a little easier just by dragging the assets around and adjusting their location that way.

      But I needed a cow. So for this particular demo, I went and grabbed-- and you can do this, too. You can go to the Asset Browser and type in cow. And there it is. There's the Inventor cow. That's all available for you to use. And it made that demo work a lot better by being able to put some livestock in the paddock.

      And, again, I didn't model this. I just went up and grabbed the cow. There's also a horse. I don't want to leave the horse out. He's not as pretty as the cow, but the horse is there, too. So if you ever need a horse or a cow, you're welcome. That's in there already for you.

      So mesh assets just work out. Here's another tip you get from me because you're here with me today. In the Asset Browser, if you type in mesh, all of the ones that I have published-- and I'm sorry, except for the cow and the horse, all right? Except for these two. All of the mesh assets I've ever produced are up here. And there's a bunch of different people. There's a bunch of different workers. I think some of these workers look a little bit better than the ones that come with the Factory Utilities, all right?

      So I actually didn't model the yellow man and the yellow woman. I modeled what I call the Factory Stig, the guy who's standing and sitting and-- the guy with the blue shirt and the sunglasses. I actually modeled that for Autodesk. But these, I absolutely admit, these look a little bit better than the ones that we've got inside of the application.

      So-- oops, sorry about that. Let me see.

      So the pitfalls for meshes-- just watch out for the scale. Make sure you know what the scale of the intended item is so that you have that scale factor when you need it. Also, with meshes, they do not accept shadows like the solid models do. So if you get to rendering, a mesh doesn't really accept shadows like all the other parts do.

      Also, a mesh-- you want to look at how meshes appear in drawings. You will see the facets in the drawing view, so they look a little faceted in the drawing views. But I think they look great everywhere else, so definitely try to incorporate some meshes if you haven't done that.

      The next technique think I'd focus on-- and not everyone's going to do this, but AutoCAD is there. And you can create assets in AutoCAD. I don't know if anyone remembers, but when the Factory Utilities first came out in 20-- gosh, 2012, 2011, you could actually buy just the Factory Utilities for AutoCAD. And all of that stuff is still there. So in AutoCAD, I can take any block and turn it into a Factory Asset. That's the big takeaway here.

      But there are tools that just work in 2D. I'm kind of a big fan of the ProModel for AutoCAD. I've taken the training for that. I've utilized that. And that tool just-- it's all about process analysis in AutoCAD 2D. And having your assets available in 2D is very nice, very easy to convert your existing drawings to Factory Assets with the asset creation tools inside of AutoCAD.

      Now, the pitfall for this is that it's just AutoCAD. It's just 2D. You can incorporate a 3D bounding box if your asset has a defined perimeter. You can have a bounding box, but you do have to type in the height. You have to know the height ahead of time.

      But you can create 2D assets. That asset-- if you try to drag this asset into Inventor, it will not work. You need to drag it into AutoCAD and then sync AutoCAD to Inventor to see the asset blueprint inside of Inventor.

      There, I did include a link to the ProModel demonstration page if you are interested in that. And I believe, guys, I probably skipped it, but on the meshes, I did include a link for the process of how to turn a SketchUp model into an asset. And the point clouds-- there are links in the point clouds as well. There are links in here for that process in case you want that. Those links are in your handout. I want to make sure I get those.

      Moving on, iLogic. So, listen-- and I remember the first time I saw iLogic, and I just cowered in fear. Like, I just did-- I'm not a code guy. I never have been a code guy. I'm a 3D modeler. That's my forte.

      It wasn't until I sat down and took the iLogic class that I realized that this is really not code. I mean, if you can read a spreadsheet, if you can read a flow diagram, a flow chart, you can read these arguments inside of iLogic.

      So when I talk about developing your techniques in iLogic, it's not as hard as you think it is. If you've been avoiding it for a while, you really want to go in and take a look at what's available. I shared with you some of my basic arguments. I really do keep it simple with iLogic. If you know some simple rules with iLogic, you can exponentially increase the functionality of your assets.

      So some of my favorite arguments here-- here's a select case for body color. I want to have a parameter that controls the color of my model. You saw that with the hauler a little bit earlier. It's just an iLogic rule that if I pick a text parameter for a color, then a certain color is applied to the model automatically.

      You can control multiple parameters with a single text parameter. This is that mama bear, baby bear, papa bear scenario. So for instance, if I pick short from a text parameter, then many parameters will change to their short sizes. If I pick medium, then many parameters will adjust to the medium setting, or if I pick large, then many parameters will adjust to their large setting. So one parameter can cause many things to change at the same time. Very useful.

      And then, finally, feature suppression. I might want to turn features on and off, like the hatch you saw in the bulkhead example earlier. That's just a simple rule that's in there that says, hey, if I tweak this parameter, if I move it one way or another, then the hatch is either on or off.

      Now, you can do that with a true false parameter, or you can do that with a text parameter. Either way, it works, different ways. You can also-- later on, you'll see you can also use binary parameters and avoid iLogic completely.

      But listen, back up for a second. I'm sorry. The link here-- this one is something I highly recommend. There's a company called ASCENT. They've got an iLogic book. You can go in and grab that book and either attend the class-- that always-- I always encourage people to attend classes for training-- or just get the book and work your way through it.

      It's excellent material. It will walk you step by step through the initial stages of iLogic. And it's just a lot of stuff in there to learn. And really, at the end of the day, you just need the basic stuff to make assets. You really do. The pitfall here is it is going to take some time to really dive in and understand iLogic.

      Now, I go from that to iLogic forms. You saw those forms and how nice that was. And here's a secret. And I don't know why Autodesk doesn't scream about this, but forms are easy to use. You don't have a lot of code or programming that goes into a form. It's simply a little wizard where you drag the certain parameters you want onto the form, and you build your form. It's a form builder.

      And it works so easily. And I'm just-- I'm flabbergasted that Autodesk doesn't talk more about how easy it is to do this. You really don't need to do any iLogic to use a form.

      Let's come down here and talk about forms for a minute. I'm going to focus on that bulkhead for a minute. So I'm going to select this bulkhead, and I'm going to open it. This is something that the normal Factory Asset user typically wouldn't do.

      But here, I made this model, so-- here, I don't want my end user to ever go in and look at the parameter table, because if they did, they'd just-- they'd get shocked. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on here. There's a lot of named parameters. There's a lot of formulas in here that I've got set up. I've done a lot of work, and I don't want the end user to come in here and make a mistake and click something and cause the asset to not be valid or cause it to throw an error or something like that.

      So, look, I don't want the end user to deal with all of these parameters. What I want the end user to do is deal with this simple dialog box. So I can go to my iLogic area, and I can go to the forms area. And here's the form. The form-- you'll see this in the PowerPoint. It has to be called FactoryDesignProperties. One word, capital F, capital D, capital P. You got to call it that. As long as you make the form, it'll work.

      And making a form is easy. If I right-click and edit this form, here's the dialog box. Here's the form. You can scoot this off to the side. It automatically builds this based on your labeling area and your property area. So you get a list of your parameters that you've included, and you just drag them over.

      And you learn how to group them. There's groups and tabs and rows and pictures that you can add to this area. And each of these lines has a little bit of property information about how it displays and how it works. So if you've ever built a form in any other application, it's so easy to do. And that's all there is. There is no-- there's really no iLogic information necessary to utilize the form.

      So I can't dwell on it a lot, but I really think if you have a really complex asset, you really should think about developing a form for its use. It's just very easy to do.

      All right. Moving on. I mentioned binary parameters, all right? So that might be a concept that many of you haven't dealt with yet. But listen, I want you to understand just how easy this is. Guys, bear with me a second. Hop back to PowerPoint. And let me see-- if I compare the binary parameters-- there we go.

      So with a binary parameter, it's just a multi-value parameter with two values, 1 and 0. But then you can incorporate this into your feature properties to turn things on and off, to suppress features. And the big value here is you don't need iLogic to do this.

      Again, I mentioned before, I was afraid of iLogic for quite a long time, so I tried to avoid it wherever possible. I've got a file I want to open here. Let me hop over to my home screen real quick. I'm going to open up this clearance zone.

      Here is a model. It's a simple model of a CNC machine. And I've added two features that represent clearance zones, this feature here and this feature here.

      Now, ahead of the presentation, I went into my parameter area, and I made a user parameter called Clearance. And I simply need to adjust this and make the multi-value here. I made it unitless, so I can delete that 1-millimeter parameter.

      And then I'm going to type in 0 ul. I just always put the units in here, and then 1 ul. So those are the only two values allowed in this design. So if I click OK, I'm going to go ahead and set it-- I'll leave it at 0 for right now. All right.

      So we'll click Done. So right now, that parameter doesn't control anything. But watch this. If I go over here to the feature in question, I can right-click, and every feature has properties. I used to go in here and color the part a lot. This is where I used to add color to features a lot. But there's also a suppression argument. So every feature has a suppression argument.

      So I can say real quick that if Clearance does not equal 1, then suppress the feature. Click OK. Part disappears. I'm going to do it again. I'll go to the Next Feature Properties. And again, if Clearance does not equal 1-- now, you can write that any way you want. You can say, if Clearance equals 0, it would suppress it. But I say if it doesn't equal 1, there you go.

      So now, if I go back to my parameter table, I have a parameter that can control whether or not I see those clearance zones. This is exactly how I got that hatch to appear and disappear in our previous example. If I went over here to this bulkhead, there's my logic form. I could open up the form.

      Ope, there it is right there. Sorry. There's my form. It just popped up in the wrong place for me. Sorry about that. So I could go in here into the form, and I could go to the hatch tab. And there is my 1 or 0 for door number 2. So if I turn it on, you're going to see the hatch appear. It's just that simple to do. And there is no iLogic controlling whether or not those hatches are showing. It's just simply a binary parameter.

      So it's a good technique to know and have at your disposal. I've already shown you the iMates, so incorporating iMates is something that I think many assets should include. Sometimes, you want motion. Not all the time. It's very rare. But in a factory layout, sometimes motion helps the story move along. So I have one of these here for the bulkhead.

      Now, if you're going to incorporate motion into your asset, it's going to be really important that you ground one of your assets. So make sure you ground at least one of them before you start adding things that move on it. I keep all of my structure assets under this STRU. So if you search on STRU, you'll find these assets, the bulkhead and the hatch.

      But here's my hatch. This hatch doesn't have a landing surface, so it just lands on the ground, and I can drop it off. But I know that once I drop it off, I can use the Alt button and the iMate to snap it up here in position. And then I have a hatch that actually moves in Inventor.

      Why shouldn't you include that mechanized motion in your factory layout? And it could be that easy, just by including some iMates. I showed you iMates up on the corral fence. Those were insert iMates that allowed me to snap those things together and then just drag them around because that corral fence never follows a straight line. It's always going to follow the line of the field or the paddock where you're erecting that particular fence.

      But those are excellent techniques to do, is including your iMates. IMates are in the-- ASCENT make some really good books. The Advanced Part Modeling book-- the Advanced Assembly book, specifically, is where they discuss iMates. If you've never done those before, definitely, again, follow the link in the handout.

      And I have the pitfall up here. It says, make sure you ground at least one of the assets before you try to move it. If not, they'll both fly around, and you don't want that to happen.

      I showed you earlier in the presentation a set of chained assets. Now, on this one, this one's a little bit more intricate. But it's absolutely doable. You need to understand that with the chain, if you want your assets to chain together, you're going to need to publish a straight asset, and you're going to need to publish a curved asset. You need to do that first.

      And then you can start the Create Asset Chain command, and a wizard will appear and walk you through the remainder of the process. To me, the hardest thing is where is this command? On the Factory tab, you'll see Create Chained Asset right here. And you actually don't have to have anything open at all to do this, but you do have to create your assets first.

      This is going to launch the wizard that's going to allow you to put in your basic information. Then you're going to set up your straight segment. Then you're going to set up your turn segment, your publish location, and then your summary information.

      So you can create assets, like that conveyor chain. I've seen chains for fencing that does that, for guardrail. It's quite a popular methodology to do, but it does require you a bit of time and effort. It's almost like you need to publish twice. You publish the original assets, prepare the straight and the curve, and then you can publish the chained asset as a group. And then they will show up with the chain mark in the Asset Browser.

      There is a link here to some YouTube videos, but also, I would refer you-- really, the best place here is to go to the Factory Utilities Help for that particular command. You're going to learn the most there.

      All right. Asset properties, all right? Metadata. That's the next big thing. All of your assets should have the metadata built into them. Now, typically, this was always historically done in iProperties, but a few releases ago, they introduced the Asset Properties dialog during publishing. And this information supersedes what you have in the iProperty area. So it's OK to use iProperties. You just understand iProperties are going to automatically fill out Asset Properties. That's nice. You can use it that way. But if you overwrite the value in Asset Properties, this takes precedent in the asset as it's published.

      It's similar to iProperty. Similar. It is different. You're going to have-- every single tab is going to have-- when you click into a cell, it's going to have the ability to reference your existing design parameters. So for instance, under the description, you can write in, hey, just the word "conveyor," and then you can put in the formula length by width by height. And that, basically, will have a parametric description from that point on.

      You can also declare which of these pieces of information show up as attributes in AutoCAD, just by turning on the Attribute Visualization area here. So just a key point, for my assets, I always like my description to fill out and the descriptor. There's a whole tab for the descriptor. If you hover over an asset, you can see its descriptor. So if I hover over the asset here, you'll see the race car or the hauler. Or if I hover over the bulkhead, you can see a lot of information that appears about that one. So you can determine what happens when you are using the descriptor.

      This is also the place where you'll define the layer. If you want to predefine the layer so that when this ends up in AutoCAD it's on a predefined layer, that's where you'll set this, is in the asset properties.

      All right. Don't have a good link for that one. I would imagine, again, the Factory Utilities Help information would be mostly utilized there.

      All right. Now, this is my final one. There are other ones. I could go all day long, but this is my final top technique that I would really encourage most Factory Asset designers to know, and that's multi-body modeling. Again, I would reference the Advanced Part and Assembly book from ASCENT. These are great references for multi-body design.

      I think of multi-body-- I've always thought of it as the fourth Boolean operation. You know basic modeling, right? I think most of us have taken basic modeling. You make your first feature, and then your next feature has either got to join, cut, or intersect with the original feature.

      Well, there is a fourth option there called New Solid. And that will make a separate body. And this technique allows you to design a single part file that basically represents an assembly of parts. So you can start from scratch in a blank file. You can make a multi-body design that represents whatever piece of equipment you want to use.

      Bodies can have different colors. You saw earlier in the example that some of the bodies were transparent, and some were opaque. That's the only way to do that in Inventor, is to use multiple bodies in a single part file.

      There's another tip you get for me today-- maybe you know this, maybe you don't, but one of the-- I mentioned the simplification techniques earlier. Here's another one. I didn't put it on there. It's kind of a bonus for you guys being here with me today.

      If you have your main assembly-- remember that assembly with all the parts in it, the production-level assembly? If you simply export, open the assembly and export it to SAT, Inventor will export to an SAT file-- it's actually called an ASIS file, but the file extension is SAT.

      You export an SAT, and then in Inventor, just go in and import the SAT, there will be an option-- it's only available on SAT, but when you import it, there's an option to import as a multi-body, single, solid file. So you can skip the Simplify step. You can skip the manual simplification. You can just export SAT, import that SAT file, and turn any assembly into a multi-body single part file. I use that all the time. Just another way for me to simplify design down to a single component.

      So learn multi-body modeling. Just-- if you don't know it, force yourself, learn about it, and start to utilize that in your next assets.

      So I'm down here to my conclusion. We've kind of discussed the techniques. There are other ones. I mentioned earlier Connector Class properties. That's a really rare one. I didn't include it today. But Connector Class properties-- if you're interested in those, go check out the asset development checklist class that I taught in 2015. I did that there, focused on that a little bit more there.

      But there are other techniques. So, listen, as far as the conclusion goes, I hope you learned a lot from the presentation today. I hope we revealed some techniques that you didn't know about. Hopefully, you've covered some new ground today. And it's important you understand that-- listen, it's really rare where you need to know all of these techniques. That's a really rare occurrence. But as an asset modeler, if you want to focus on your upcoming training, I would focus on learning these techniques.

      If you've never done iLogic, hey, go learn iLogic. If you've never done multi-body, go learn that stuff. Certainly, parameters-- if you're not up to speed on parameters, definitely go check out parameters.

      But there are others. Maybe you don't have to do point clouds, you don't have to do meshes, but you need to have these in your bag of tricks. You never know when it's going to be essential that you have that.

      So those are my favorite ones. I hope you learned something today. Listen, as far as the links and references go-- listen, I tried-- almost every page had, really, homework for you to do, something else for you to go see and investigate. And I hope those links can get you started down the path on learning these new techniques.

      But, listen, I got-- there's a lot of credit and thanks that go to the author of those techniques, both the folks at ASCENT and Autodesk and even the stuff that I've got up here on my YouTube page. Just want to thank the folks that put that stuff together so that we can reference it and use it throughout the class.

      So, listen, I really do appreciate the time and attention you guys have given to this. I hope that you guys-- the rest of your conference at AU is just magnificent. And I hope you have a great deal of time. I wish you the best. I hope you have a great AU experience. And I hope that the next assets you create-- you get a chance to utilize some of the stuff you saw in today's class. Thank you for your time and attention. You guys take care.