Create a factory asset from Inventor

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Okay, we're going to start the Inventor section off with how to create an asset from an Inventor file.

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For the Inventor section, pretty much everything we'll be doing is in the Inventor professional application itself.

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So I'm going to go ahead and launch that application.

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Once this application finishes loading, I'm going to now start working within the factory tools.

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And the primary thing you will be doing within Inventor for factory design purposes is to create and modify,

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and manage your assets.

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So I'm going to go ahead and flip over to my "Factory" tab within Inventor and then I'm going to choose the "Create Asset" menu.

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"Create Asset" has a number of options available.

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You can start by modeling a part, you can model an assembly, you can import DWG solids,

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and you can do the same thing through using the "Vault" application.

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You can also import a model and import a model from "Vault." We're going to choose "Import Model."

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Now, you have the ability when the "Import Model" comes up,

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to choose things other than the Inventor model files.

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However, for this, I'm utilizing an Inventor part that represents a "Bench."

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So I'm going to highlight that and I'm going to hit "OK."

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This is going to give me a warning that the location of this file is not within my active project.

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My project scope is where all of my working files are defined,

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however, for demonstration purposes, and because I'm bringing in an asset that I have not utilized yet,

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I am going to bring it in from essentially an outside location.

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This message is warning me that that outside location is not within the scope of the project file.

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For this purpose, I am fine with that.

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So I'm going to choose "Yes."

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However, if you receive this message and you're not expecting it, you can hit "No,"

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you can close this, and you can look into your active project.

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Mine is this factory design project and all of my files should essentially exist,

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where this factory design IPJ -- Inventor project file is located.

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So any file or any folders or files that exist below this designs factory folder,

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is where I would expect to be opening files.

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We'll flip back over and do "Import Model" again.

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I'm going to choose Bench, I'm going to hit "Open", and again this time, I'm going to say "Yes."

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And I'll show you in just a moment why it is Okay that I said yes to this.

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So once this finishes loading, I am essentially going to publish this asset real quick.

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I have some key parameters that have been defined for this asset.

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These can be specified as you desire for each one of your assets and they are properties that then become searchable.

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For this one, I'm going to choose to publish and it's going to warn me that this needs to be saved and asks if I want to save it now.

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I'm going to say "Yes," and it does a quick save on it.

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I am going to choose to publish this to my "Vault" as opposed to locally.

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Going to get a Vault login dialogue, which I'm going to "OK."

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And then I have two locations within my "Vault" where I'm going to store factory related information.

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One is within the "Asset" folder and one is within the "Layout" folder.

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This is an asset, so we're going to use the asset directory and from there, we can go ahead and hit "OK" to publish.

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Just to explore some of the additional options available,

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you have the ability to "Simplify" on demand and it will have parameters to specify either "Coarse" or "Medium,"

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or you can have custom parameters for simplification.

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We're not going to do that at the moment.

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And you also have the ability to specify whether you want to publish a 2D asset or not.

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The 2D asset is what the AutoCAD Architecture application will utilize during layouts.

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Flipping back to the "General" tab, we'll go ahead and hit "OK," and this will go through a publication process.

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Once that has been published successfully,

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we'll then have within our "Vault Professional" application, an asset available.

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So if I flip over to this and look for "Bench," I should hopefully see something within "Vault" -- I do.

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And this is my "Bench" asset from factory.

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I am then able to utilize this asset within layouts.

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I'm going to go ahead and finish the asset builder and we'll pick back up with creating an asset from a third party file,

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which you'll find is very similar.