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Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
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Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Transcript
00:02
create soft jaws.
00:05
In this video will identify appropriate part.
00:07
Holding services will import soft jaw and Vice model
00:10
will break design links and we use projected geometry to create a soft jaw
00:17
Infusion 3 60. We're going to get started on a new untitled document.
00:21
And we want to begin by setting our document settings and the units 2".
00:27
When we're talking about soft jaw geometry,
00:29
this is going to be a softer version of replaceable
00:33
jaws that can be used to hold complex parts.
00:36
But the first thing we need is a part that really requires this.
00:39
So since we are learning cad,
00:41
I thought it was a good opportunity for us to draw a simple part.
00:45
So let's get started by creating a new sketch on the top plane.
00:49
We're going to use our center diameter circle tool.
00:51
We're going to drag this off to the left to about the 1.5 inch position.
00:55
And we're going to make a one inch diameter.
00:58
We're going to use our line tool and we're gonna create a vertical line.
01:01
Hit escape and we'll turn this into construction.
01:05
Using our dimension tools which again is D on the keyboard.
01:08
We want to make sure that this is 1.5" away and that
01:12
it has a horizontal relationship with its center point and the origin.
01:17
Next we're going to use mirror
01:19
select the circle.
01:20
And for the mirror line we're going to select the vertical construction line.
01:24
Next we want to use our arc tool and we're gonna use a three point arc.
01:29
We're gonna go from the left circle to the right circle,
01:33
and then we're going to snap to that vertical line somewhere,
01:36
We want to make sure that we use horizontal
01:38
and vertical constraints between the endpoints of the arc.
01:41
And then we're going to use our dimension tools
01:44
to figure out where is best to place this.
01:46
So I'm going to select the arc and I'm going to add a radius of 5.25,
01:51
and then we're going to select our tangent constraint and apply a tangent,
01:55
see between the circle.
01:58
Then we'll use our line tool, create a horizontal line, convert it to construction,
02:03
and then we'll use mirror once more.
02:06
We're gonna make sure to mirror this large arc and
02:09
we're going to mirror it across the new horizontal line.
02:12
So this part is obviously problematic for us to hold into its traditional vice.
02:18
Let's go ahead and extrude it up
02:21
And I'm just going to pull it up a distance of .25. I want to show my sketch again,
02:28
select each of these profiles.
02:30
We're going to extrude and this time we're going to
02:32
go up half an inch and allow them to join together
02:36
hiding our sketch. We now have something that needs to be held in a soft jaw.
02:41
So let's go ahead and let's save this as soft jaw part and
02:47
we can begin to understand the concept of creating a soft jaw.
02:51
So in the data set that supplied, we have a generic vice with parallels.
02:55
and we also have a soft jaw.
02:58
The generic vice can be found inside of the data panel under the cam samples,
03:02
but this one has the addition of parallels.
03:05
So the first thing that I want to do is I'm going to take this and drag it in
03:10
and you can see that it's placed in the design.
03:13
I'm gonna go ahead and pull this down,
03:16
rotate my model around,
03:18
pull it back over so that it's in roughly the right
03:20
location but it doesn't have to be perfect and we'll say,
03:23
okay,
03:25
the next thing that we need to think about is the
03:27
fact that the jaws in the generic vice right now,
03:30
these are not soft jaws.
03:32
So the first thing that we want to think about
03:34
is the context of the changes that we're making,
03:37
dragging a design from the data panel into
03:40
the current design creates an external reference and you
03:43
can see that we have a chain link icon here in the browser under our component.
03:48
This means that the design can be changed but all
03:52
of the affected or linked designs will also be changed.
03:55
So in a case where I'm making something like a soft jaw,
03:58
I usually break the link with the original design
04:01
knowing that I'm going to have a unique version.
04:04
What you can do is you can create a version of the vice that already has
04:08
soft jaws that are unmodified and then you can drag and drop that in as well.
04:12
But we're going to take care of all that here in this file.
04:14
But the first step for this is to right click and we're going to break the link.
04:19
Breaking the link brings the vice and all
04:22
of its references internal to our current design.
04:25
I'm also going to take my soft jaw and drag it in
04:30
and I'm gonna go ahead and just pull it out of the way for now say, okay,
04:33
and I'm going to break its reference as well.
04:37
So keep in mind if you keep those external references,
04:40
any changes made in the context of this assembly will also affect those originals.
04:45
So now that we have this in our design, we're going to hide the original body,
04:49
the part that we need the machine.
04:50
And then I want to take a look at the rear and front jaw of our vice.
04:55
If we expand these, there are a lot of different bodies that are contained in here.
04:59
We've got some parallels.
05:00
We've got additional bodies that are important, such as the hardware.
05:04
But then we have this body. One which is not important because we need to replace it.
05:08
The same thing is true for the rear.
05:10
You can see that we've got hardware here and body too
05:13
is the portion of the vice that we want to replace.
05:16
So what I want to do with my soft jaw is get it into the correct orientation and I can do
05:21
this by using different tools such as joints or aligning in
05:25
this case what I want to do is create joints,
05:27
but before I get to that point,
05:29
I want to make a copy of this so I'm going to select it right click copy.
05:35
And then what we're going to do is right click
05:37
at the very top and use something called paste new.
05:40
Now, paste new is different from just pasting this component.
05:44
If we were to just paste it,
05:46
it would again maintain a link between the two by doing a paste new.
05:50
We're making a unique copy of it and I'm going to capture its position and say okay
05:55
before we go much further, I want to take the generic vice, find the base,
06:00
right click and ground it by grounding the base.
06:04
This means that the sliding jaw can move and our soft jaws can still
06:08
move but the vice itself is going to stay in the correct position.
06:12
This is going to help us when we're setting up our relationships
06:16
now that we have the vice in place and we have our soft jaws.
06:20
What we need to do is position them.
06:22
So the first thing that I want to do is I'm going to position them using joints.
06:26
So I'm going to select a joint,
06:29
I need to go to my motion and make sure that it is
06:31
set to rigid and the position is going to be a cylindrical reference.
06:36
So in this case as I move my cursor around, we want to make note of the X. Y. Z.
06:41
Orientation of the icon and where its location is.
06:45
Now if you find yourself hovering over a face and
06:48
you can't quite get to what you're trying to select,
06:50
you can hold down the control or command key
06:53
and it's going to lock its focus.
06:55
So for this example we're going to select the center position of the upper arc and
06:60
then for its two position we are going to select the back edge of the bolt.
07:06
You can see that it pushes it into place and
07:08
because of the different orientations everything appears to be okay.
07:13
However you'll note that the soft jaw is actually down into the vice.
07:17
This means that I really should select the arc position on the lower portion.
07:22
I can just cancel out of that first selection and I can re select it.
07:27
So again holding down control or command
07:30
push it into place and you can see now it
07:32
appears to be sitting on the surface of the vice.
07:35
We'll say okay
07:37
and we'll repeat the process over here.
07:40
So right click marking, menu, repeat joint.
07:43
I'm gonna go ahead and select that position.
07:47
Select the back of my bolt.
07:49
And okay.
07:50
The benefit of us doing this is now the soft draw is going to move with
07:54
the rest of the vice and it's going
07:56
to respect any joints that have already been applied
07:59
because we need to move all this up into place for our part.
08:01
We're going to right click on the base and we're going to un ground it show
08:05
our part and now note that everything can move relative to our part or our body.
08:10
The next step in the process is for us to position our part relative to the vice.
08:15
Now in this case are part is a body which
08:17
means that it's linked or locked to the origin.
08:20
So what makes the most sense for us to do is to move the vice relative to our part.
08:26
This can be done a couple of different ways but from the top view it already looks or
08:30
appears that were centered because of the way that
08:33
the vice model and the soft jaws were inserted.
08:35
So the main thing that we need to do is position
08:37
it in the Y direction as well as the Z direction.
08:41
And I'm going to get the Z direction set up first.
08:43
So I'm going to go to modify a line, I'm going to select the bottom face of this body
08:50
and I'm going to select the top face of this soft jaw.
08:53
Keeping in mind I don't want to select any of these positions,
08:55
just the face itself and it's going to push me directly up to the top of it.
09:00
I'm going to capture the position and say, okay
09:04
next I'm going to select the entire generic vice model and I'm going to use move
09:09
in this case we're going to move everything vertically.
09:12
I'm going to select this vertical direction and I want to
09:15
hold my part with at least an eighth of an inch.
09:18
So I'm going to say 0.125, it's going to move everything up, That same amount,
09:22
capture the position and I can say okay, however,
09:26
this is also a great time for us to position it in the y direction.
09:30
So the wide distance, we need to move over at least three quarters of an inch.
09:35
So I'm gonna say -175 and take a look at where it's sitting.
09:40
I'm going to say okay,
09:41
and the last thing I need to do is I need
09:43
to position this other jaw but notice everything is floating around.
09:47
Now that we've got the fixed jaw in place, I can go back to the base of my vice,
09:52
right click and ground it.
09:54
This means the soft jaw can move along with the sliding jaw
09:58
and I just simply need to position it at a correct location.
10:02
This is where it's important to understand the distance
10:04
and the size of your part in this case.
10:07
What I want to do is I want to position it a certain distance away.
10:10
So the way that I'm going to handle this is I can use joints or
10:15
I can use a line there are a couple different methods that we can do.
10:18
But the first thing I'm going to do is go to
10:20
modify and I'm going to try to align these two together
10:24
and notice that it doesn't work.
10:25
And part of the reason it doesn't work is because
10:28
there is a limit to how far this can go,
10:30
you can see that there's a physical limit, not letting me go any further.
10:33
So the easiest option is just to capture its position.
10:37
And even though there are joints involved, we can still use move,
10:41
make sure that we're moving components and we can select
10:44
this component here and move it a specified distance away.
10:48
In this case we're going to be moving half an inch capturing the position and saying,
10:52
okay,
10:53
that was quite a lot of work to set everything up,
10:56
but after you've done this a few times and you set up a model that can be used,
10:60
it can be relatively quick.
11:02
The next phase of the process is to modify the soft jaws with geometry from our part.
11:07
Now there are a couple of things to consider here.
11:09
The part itself has a sketch that already matches its shape.
11:13
So it could be relatively easy for us to use that sketch.
11:16
We can also create a sketch and project the body
11:20
down onto wherever our sketch needs to extrude from.
11:24
And the other option is for us to use tools
11:26
like combined or even to use tools like boundary fill.
11:31
Now these can be a little bit more complicated but let's take a look at combined.
11:35
So the target body is going to be our soft jaw.
11:38
The tool body is going to be our original part we want to cut and we
11:42
want to keep the tool we don't want to get rid of it will say okay.
11:45
And now if we hide the body,
11:47
you can see that we've removed the exact right amount of geometry,
11:52
we can repeat this process on the other side. Our target is going to be this, the tool.
11:56
We're going to keep the tools and we're going to say, okay,
11:58
so now we've removed exactly the right amount of material to hold our part,
12:03
there is one extra piece to this process that needs to be understood
12:08
depending on the shape and the geometry of your part.
12:11
You need to make sure that you account for any flex or distortion in the
12:16
jaws and you also need to make sure that you account for any tolerances.
12:19
For example, the way that this is drawn, we have a sharp corner on the bottom.
12:23
If our part did not have an accurately machine sharp corner,
12:27
it would be difficult for us to hold it.
12:29
So there are a lot of other factors that need to be kept in
12:33
in the back of your mind whenever you're designing soft jaws or fixtures,
12:37
but in this case this is the basic process of setting up
12:40
your vice model as well as setting up the soft draw itself.
12:44
So at this point,
12:46
let's go ahead and make sure that we save
12:47
this design before moving on to the next step.
Video transcript
00:02
create soft jaws.
00:05
In this video will identify appropriate part.
00:07
Holding services will import soft jaw and Vice model
00:10
will break design links and we use projected geometry to create a soft jaw
00:17
Infusion 3 60. We're going to get started on a new untitled document.
00:21
And we want to begin by setting our document settings and the units 2".
00:27
When we're talking about soft jaw geometry,
00:29
this is going to be a softer version of replaceable
00:33
jaws that can be used to hold complex parts.
00:36
But the first thing we need is a part that really requires this.
00:39
So since we are learning cad,
00:41
I thought it was a good opportunity for us to draw a simple part.
00:45
So let's get started by creating a new sketch on the top plane.
00:49
We're going to use our center diameter circle tool.
00:51
We're going to drag this off to the left to about the 1.5 inch position.
00:55
And we're going to make a one inch diameter.
00:58
We're going to use our line tool and we're gonna create a vertical line.
01:01
Hit escape and we'll turn this into construction.
01:05
Using our dimension tools which again is D on the keyboard.
01:08
We want to make sure that this is 1.5" away and that
01:12
it has a horizontal relationship with its center point and the origin.
01:17
Next we're going to use mirror
01:19
select the circle.
01:20
And for the mirror line we're going to select the vertical construction line.
01:24
Next we want to use our arc tool and we're gonna use a three point arc.
01:29
We're gonna go from the left circle to the right circle,
01:33
and then we're going to snap to that vertical line somewhere,
01:36
We want to make sure that we use horizontal
01:38
and vertical constraints between the endpoints of the arc.
01:41
And then we're going to use our dimension tools
01:44
to figure out where is best to place this.
01:46
So I'm going to select the arc and I'm going to add a radius of 5.25,
01:51
and then we're going to select our tangent constraint and apply a tangent,
01:55
see between the circle.
01:58
Then we'll use our line tool, create a horizontal line, convert it to construction,
02:03
and then we'll use mirror once more.
02:06
We're gonna make sure to mirror this large arc and
02:09
we're going to mirror it across the new horizontal line.
02:12
So this part is obviously problematic for us to hold into its traditional vice.
02:18
Let's go ahead and extrude it up
02:21
And I'm just going to pull it up a distance of .25. I want to show my sketch again,
02:28
select each of these profiles.
02:30
We're going to extrude and this time we're going to
02:32
go up half an inch and allow them to join together
02:36
hiding our sketch. We now have something that needs to be held in a soft jaw.
02:41
So let's go ahead and let's save this as soft jaw part and
02:47
we can begin to understand the concept of creating a soft jaw.
02:51
So in the data set that supplied, we have a generic vice with parallels.
02:55
and we also have a soft jaw.
02:58
The generic vice can be found inside of the data panel under the cam samples,
03:02
but this one has the addition of parallels.
03:05
So the first thing that I want to do is I'm going to take this and drag it in
03:10
and you can see that it's placed in the design.
03:13
I'm gonna go ahead and pull this down,
03:16
rotate my model around,
03:18
pull it back over so that it's in roughly the right
03:20
location but it doesn't have to be perfect and we'll say,
03:23
okay,
03:25
the next thing that we need to think about is the
03:27
fact that the jaws in the generic vice right now,
03:30
these are not soft jaws.
03:32
So the first thing that we want to think about
03:34
is the context of the changes that we're making,
03:37
dragging a design from the data panel into
03:40
the current design creates an external reference and you
03:43
can see that we have a chain link icon here in the browser under our component.
03:48
This means that the design can be changed but all
03:52
of the affected or linked designs will also be changed.
03:55
So in a case where I'm making something like a soft jaw,
03:58
I usually break the link with the original design
04:01
knowing that I'm going to have a unique version.
04:04
What you can do is you can create a version of the vice that already has
04:08
soft jaws that are unmodified and then you can drag and drop that in as well.
04:12
But we're going to take care of all that here in this file.
04:14
But the first step for this is to right click and we're going to break the link.
04:19
Breaking the link brings the vice and all
04:22
of its references internal to our current design.
04:25
I'm also going to take my soft jaw and drag it in
04:30
and I'm gonna go ahead and just pull it out of the way for now say, okay,
04:33
and I'm going to break its reference as well.
04:37
So keep in mind if you keep those external references,
04:40
any changes made in the context of this assembly will also affect those originals.
04:45
So now that we have this in our design, we're going to hide the original body,
04:49
the part that we need the machine.
04:50
And then I want to take a look at the rear and front jaw of our vice.
04:55
If we expand these, there are a lot of different bodies that are contained in here.
04:59
We've got some parallels.
05:00
We've got additional bodies that are important, such as the hardware.
05:04
But then we have this body. One which is not important because we need to replace it.
05:08
The same thing is true for the rear.
05:10
You can see that we've got hardware here and body too
05:13
is the portion of the vice that we want to replace.
05:16
So what I want to do with my soft jaw is get it into the correct orientation and I can do
05:21
this by using different tools such as joints or aligning in
05:25
this case what I want to do is create joints,
05:27
but before I get to that point,
05:29
I want to make a copy of this so I'm going to select it right click copy.
05:35
And then what we're going to do is right click
05:37
at the very top and use something called paste new.
05:40
Now, paste new is different from just pasting this component.
05:44
If we were to just paste it,
05:46
it would again maintain a link between the two by doing a paste new.
05:50
We're making a unique copy of it and I'm going to capture its position and say okay
05:55
before we go much further, I want to take the generic vice, find the base,
06:00
right click and ground it by grounding the base.
06:04
This means that the sliding jaw can move and our soft jaws can still
06:08
move but the vice itself is going to stay in the correct position.
06:12
This is going to help us when we're setting up our relationships
06:16
now that we have the vice in place and we have our soft jaws.
06:20
What we need to do is position them.
06:22
So the first thing that I want to do is I'm going to position them using joints.
06:26
So I'm going to select a joint,
06:29
I need to go to my motion and make sure that it is
06:31
set to rigid and the position is going to be a cylindrical reference.
06:36
So in this case as I move my cursor around, we want to make note of the X. Y. Z.
06:41
Orientation of the icon and where its location is.
06:45
Now if you find yourself hovering over a face and
06:48
you can't quite get to what you're trying to select,
06:50
you can hold down the control or command key
06:53
and it's going to lock its focus.
06:55
So for this example we're going to select the center position of the upper arc and
06:60
then for its two position we are going to select the back edge of the bolt.
07:06
You can see that it pushes it into place and
07:08
because of the different orientations everything appears to be okay.
07:13
However you'll note that the soft jaw is actually down into the vice.
07:17
This means that I really should select the arc position on the lower portion.
07:22
I can just cancel out of that first selection and I can re select it.
07:27
So again holding down control or command
07:30
push it into place and you can see now it
07:32
appears to be sitting on the surface of the vice.
07:35
We'll say okay
07:37
and we'll repeat the process over here.
07:40
So right click marking, menu, repeat joint.
07:43
I'm gonna go ahead and select that position.
07:47
Select the back of my bolt.
07:49
And okay.
07:50
The benefit of us doing this is now the soft draw is going to move with
07:54
the rest of the vice and it's going
07:56
to respect any joints that have already been applied
07:59
because we need to move all this up into place for our part.
08:01
We're going to right click on the base and we're going to un ground it show
08:05
our part and now note that everything can move relative to our part or our body.
08:10
The next step in the process is for us to position our part relative to the vice.
08:15
Now in this case are part is a body which
08:17
means that it's linked or locked to the origin.
08:20
So what makes the most sense for us to do is to move the vice relative to our part.
08:26
This can be done a couple of different ways but from the top view it already looks or
08:30
appears that were centered because of the way that
08:33
the vice model and the soft jaws were inserted.
08:35
So the main thing that we need to do is position
08:37
it in the Y direction as well as the Z direction.
08:41
And I'm going to get the Z direction set up first.
08:43
So I'm going to go to modify a line, I'm going to select the bottom face of this body
08:50
and I'm going to select the top face of this soft jaw.
08:53
Keeping in mind I don't want to select any of these positions,
08:55
just the face itself and it's going to push me directly up to the top of it.
09:00
I'm going to capture the position and say, okay
09:04
next I'm going to select the entire generic vice model and I'm going to use move
09:09
in this case we're going to move everything vertically.
09:12
I'm going to select this vertical direction and I want to
09:15
hold my part with at least an eighth of an inch.
09:18
So I'm going to say 0.125, it's going to move everything up, That same amount,
09:22
capture the position and I can say okay, however,
09:26
this is also a great time for us to position it in the y direction.
09:30
So the wide distance, we need to move over at least three quarters of an inch.
09:35
So I'm gonna say -175 and take a look at where it's sitting.
09:40
I'm going to say okay,
09:41
and the last thing I need to do is I need
09:43
to position this other jaw but notice everything is floating around.
09:47
Now that we've got the fixed jaw in place, I can go back to the base of my vice,
09:52
right click and ground it.
09:54
This means the soft jaw can move along with the sliding jaw
09:58
and I just simply need to position it at a correct location.
10:02
This is where it's important to understand the distance
10:04
and the size of your part in this case.
10:07
What I want to do is I want to position it a certain distance away.
10:10
So the way that I'm going to handle this is I can use joints or
10:15
I can use a line there are a couple different methods that we can do.
10:18
But the first thing I'm going to do is go to
10:20
modify and I'm going to try to align these two together
10:24
and notice that it doesn't work.
10:25
And part of the reason it doesn't work is because
10:28
there is a limit to how far this can go,
10:30
you can see that there's a physical limit, not letting me go any further.
10:33
So the easiest option is just to capture its position.
10:37
And even though there are joints involved, we can still use move,
10:41
make sure that we're moving components and we can select
10:44
this component here and move it a specified distance away.
10:48
In this case we're going to be moving half an inch capturing the position and saying,
10:52
okay,
10:53
that was quite a lot of work to set everything up,
10:56
but after you've done this a few times and you set up a model that can be used,
10:60
it can be relatively quick.
11:02
The next phase of the process is to modify the soft jaws with geometry from our part.
11:07
Now there are a couple of things to consider here.
11:09
The part itself has a sketch that already matches its shape.
11:13
So it could be relatively easy for us to use that sketch.
11:16
We can also create a sketch and project the body
11:20
down onto wherever our sketch needs to extrude from.
11:24
And the other option is for us to use tools
11:26
like combined or even to use tools like boundary fill.
11:31
Now these can be a little bit more complicated but let's take a look at combined.
11:35
So the target body is going to be our soft jaw.
11:38
The tool body is going to be our original part we want to cut and we
11:42
want to keep the tool we don't want to get rid of it will say okay.
11:45
And now if we hide the body,
11:47
you can see that we've removed the exact right amount of geometry,
11:52
we can repeat this process on the other side. Our target is going to be this, the tool.
11:56
We're going to keep the tools and we're going to say, okay,
11:58
so now we've removed exactly the right amount of material to hold our part,
12:03
there is one extra piece to this process that needs to be understood
12:08
depending on the shape and the geometry of your part.
12:11
You need to make sure that you account for any flex or distortion in the
12:16
jaws and you also need to make sure that you account for any tolerances.
12:19
For example, the way that this is drawn, we have a sharp corner on the bottom.
12:23
If our part did not have an accurately machine sharp corner,
12:27
it would be difficult for us to hold it.
12:29
So there are a lot of other factors that need to be kept in
12:33
in the back of your mind whenever you're designing soft jaws or fixtures,
12:37
but in this case this is the basic process of setting up
12:40
your vice model as well as setting up the soft draw itself.
12:44
So at this point,
12:46
let's go ahead and make sure that we save
12:47
this design before moving on to the next step.
Step-by-step guide
How to buy
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