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Transcript
00:02
Insert and position components in an assembly.
00:05
After completing this video, you'll be able to place a part, Content Center part, or an iPart into an assembly,
00:11
replace select or all parts or sub-assemblies, and constrain parts within an assembly based on design intent.
00:19
To get started, in Inventor, we want to open up two supply data sets,
00:24
EngineMK2.IAM, which is in the assembly's engine MK2 subfolder, and the file iPart Angle.IPT, which is in the main project folder.
00:35
When we get the engine assembly open, we want to expand the Representations and make sure that we're on the Primary view
00:43
and that we're in the Primary position.
00:46
Let's go ahead and move this to the center of the screen using the Home button.
00:50
We're also going to go to our New and Create a New Assembly.
00:54
We're going to create a new empty assembly, and we want to begin by exploring some of our Place commands.
01:00
We have Place, Place from Content Center, Place Imported CAD files, and Place iLogic Component.
01:06
For the purposes of this video, we're going to focus on Content Center and Place.
01:11
First, when we select Content Center, we'll be placing a predetermined model from our Content Center library.
01:18
We can navigate to many different parts, such as the structural shapes channels, and select one of the channel options.
01:25
When we select OK, we'll be prompted to determine what size channel we want to use and the length of that channel.
01:31
In this case, we'll use the 3 X 3.5, and we'll set it to 48 inches in length and select OK.
01:38
We then need to pick a location to save the file, which will be an Inventor part file.
01:42
We'll select Save in our project, and let's zoom out a little bit, right click and Place Grounded at Origin.
01:49
When we Place Grounded at Origin, next, we can hit Escape to turn off the Place command from the Content Center.
01:56
We've now placed the content center component, and when we take a look inside of our browser,
02:00
we can see that there's a small pin icon, and this is because it was pinned or grounded at the origin.
02:07
There's also a set of brackets with a black dot, meaning that this object is fully constrained.
02:12
If instead we go to Place, and this time we're going to place our iPart angle and select Open,
02:21
notice that it gives us a warning about the unit system.
02:24
We'll simply select Yes, and then we get a Place Standard iPart option.
02:28
If we're placing a component that is an iPart or an iAssembly, we'll have a Keys,Tree,
02:35
and Table tab in the dialog before we place that component.
02:38
We can go to our table and select various options inside of our iPart factory.
02:44
From here, we can left click to place the component or we can right click and ground it at the origin.
02:49
For this instance, let's go ahead and left click just to place it somewhere in the design,
02:53
and then we can select Dismiss to place that single iPart.
02:57
Notice the icon is different because this is an iPart and also notice that we have a set of brackets with a clear dot that's not filled in.
03:06
This tells us that this component is under constrained.
03:09
It's free to move about until we place additional relationships on it.
03:13
If we expand this, note that we have a table here because this is an iPart.
03:19
Let's go ahead and move over to our engine assembly.
03:22
When working in larger assemblies, often times we need to make use of things like selection filters
03:27
to make it easier for us to replace certain components.
03:30
If we go ahead and rotate the engine around and we take a look at the top,
03:34
there are four individual bolts, and if we select one of those bolts,
03:38
right click and go to our Selection Filters, we can select all occurrences of that same bolt.
03:45
And we also have additional options if we select other hardware.
03:48
For example, on this engine cover, right-click and go to our Selection Filter.
03:52
We can select based on component size or if it's constrained to the same object.
03:57
When we select Constrained To, notice that it's selecting the blue object that that hardware was constrained to.
04:04
If we want to replace the hardware, we can right click and we can select all of those components,
04:10
select all occurrences, notice that they're highlighted in our browser,
04:14
and then we can right click and we can replace those occurrences.
04:17
If the hardware in this instance came from our content center, we can select it, right click, and use Replace from Content Center.
04:26
When we go to Replace from Content Center, we've got various options.
04:30
In this case, we may decide to use a separate piece of hardware that has a hole through it for safety wiring.
04:36
We can select OK and we can allow to replace all occurrences.
04:41
If we move this out of the way and select Apply, it should apply to all four occurrences that we have in this assembly.
04:48
Notice here that we've likely made a mistake and the hardware is not the correct size,
04:53
so we would need to go back in and replace all of these from the content center.
04:58
It's always important that we validate the size of hardware that we need when we're replacing it inside of an assembly.
05:04
We'll go ahead once again and say Replace All and apply the new size.
05:09
Now that we have a little bit more knowledge on these assemblies, let's go ahead and start a new assembly one more time.
05:14
This time we're going to practice using relationships and understand more about joints, constraints, and assemble tools.
05:21
We're going to begin first by selecting Place, and this time we want to navigate to our assemblies folder,
05:27
navigate to Engine Mark 2, and we want to locate our engine case.
05:33
We need to scroll down until we find Engine Case.IPT.
05:38
Note that in this design, there are going to be two engine cases.
05:41
There's an engine case rear and an engine case side.
05:45
Let's go ahead and use the engine case rear in this example.
05:48
We're going to right click and place grounded origin as this is our first component.
05:53
We'll hit Escape and note the orientation of the component is slightly off.
05:58
Iin this case, it's going to be fine for what we're doing,
06:01
but often times when we are inserting a component, you may want to use some of the additional options that allow you to rotate it.
06:07
For example, let's go ahead and reselect the engine case rear.
06:12
Before we ground it at the origin, we have options to rotate about X,Y, or Z.
06:18
If I select Rotate about X, I can position it so that it's in the correct orientation,
06:23
and then we can make sure that it's pointing with the cylinder up and grounded at the origin.
06:29
This does take a little bit of time depending on the orientation of the model,
06:34
but then we can right click and place grounded at origin and then hit Escape.
06:38
Now we can simply delete and remove the first instance.
06:42
Now that we've got our engine case grounded and placed at the origin, it's time to add a couple of other components.
06:48
Under the Place menu, we're going to take a look for the engine sleeve and the engine piston.
06:54
So we'll scroll down until we find Engine Sleeve Rear and the Engine Piston.
07:01
Select Engine Sleeve Rear and simply place it off to the side for right now and hit Escape after we've placed a single instance.
07:08
And next we'll look for the Engine Piston.
07:11
Once we've got the piston, let's go ahead and place one instance and hit Escape.
07:17
When we're taking a look at putting multiple components together in an assembly,
07:21
it's important to understand that we've got several options.
07:24
We have Joints, Constraints, and the Assemble tool.
07:27
Constrain and Assemble are generally considered legacy options, and Joint is a newer option for putting components together.
07:35
When we think about applying these joints or constraints, we're considering the degrees of freedom of the components in our assembly.
07:42
With using the Constraint option or the Assemble option, we take away degrees of freedom gradually.
07:50
When we use the Joint option, we're defining the component position as well as the motion with a single operation.
07:57
Let's go ahead and take a look at Constrained first.
07:60
When we take a look at Constrained, we've got four sets of tabs, Assembly, Motion, Transitional, and Constraint Set.
08:08
For the purposes of this video, we're going to focus solely on Assembly.
08:12
We've got assembly options for mating faces together at a specific angle, a tangent relation, insert, or symmetry.
08:21
For something like our engine sleeve, we would likely want to place it using the insert option.
08:27
We would select the position, in this case the bottom edge of our sleeve and the upper edge of our cylinder,
08:33
and then we would apply this.
08:35
It's important to note that we would want to make sure that the ports are in the correct orientation,
08:40
and we can see that they are as we rotate the model around.
08:45
Everything appears to be lined up okay.
08:48
Let's go ahead and hit Cancel because we only want to use that relationship,
08:52
in this case, the insert constraint, specifically for the sleeve in the engine.
08:56
You'll notice that we are able to rotate this around, and I'm going to use Control Z to undo that rotation.
09:03
If we ever need to make any adjustments, we can always go into our relationship folder,
09:08
or we can expand the component and take a look at the relationships applied.
09:12
We can right click and we can Edit, noting that we have an option here to lock rotation.
09:18
In this case, a single insert constraint would allow us to both place the component and lock its rotation.
09:25
Next, let's take a look at adding the piston.
09:28
In this case, we're going to use Joint.
09:31
The joint will allow us to use an automatic type based on our selection, or we can preselect the type of motion we intend.
09:38
In this case we potentially would have a cylindrical joint.
09:42
This would allow the piston to move up and down in the cylinder
09:45
as well as rotate until another joint or constraint was limiting its motion.
09:49
In that case, it would be something like the connecting rod and the crankshaft.
09:53
We could also use other options like slider that would allow it to move along a single axis,
09:59
but that would restrict the revolute motion of the piston inside the cylinder.
10:04
In this case, let's select cylindrical.
10:07
We would first select our component, noting that there's a green dot that's going to represent the location of the joint.
10:13
I'm going to make sure that this is on the top face of the piston.
10:16
Next, we would select the position where it needs to go.
10:20
Once we put it in position, notice that it's upside down.
10:24
This means that we need to reverse its orientation.
10:26
We can do this by inverting its alignment based on our selections.
10:30
Let's go ahead and rotate this around and we'll select OK.
10:35
Now the piston is inside the cylinder.
10:37
We can move it up and down and rotate it around.
10:40
So once again, when we think about putting components together in an assembly,
10:44
we can think about using a joint which allows us to use the position and the degrees of freedom defined in that single joint,
10:51
or we can use things like assemble or constrain to gradually remove those degrees of freedom.
10:56
The last thing that we want to talk about in the context of this assembly is adaptivity.
11:02
When we create a new component inside of an assembly, in this case, I'm going to leave this as part 4.
11:09
We're going to say OK, and then we're going to position it.
11:13
If I select a reference, for example, the face of this part, and then we start a new sketch by selecting the face of our part,
11:21
let's go ahead and select here.
11:23
Then we project our geometry and we use this to create, let's say, an engine cover.
11:32
I'm going to go ahead and select all the geometry.
11:35
We're going to have this go out 1/4 inch,
11:38
and then we'll return back to the top level of our assembly.
11:42
This cover has a symbol in the browser that represents adaptivity.
11:47
What this means is that if I move the engine, move the case, move the geometry in any way that this part is going to move with it.
11:55
We can see this by right clicking on the engine case and disabling the grounded option
12:01
if I move it around note that the engine cover is moving with the case.
12:05
There are two adaptive relationships here that we need to identify.
12:09
One is going to be the work plane that was created when we selected the face of the engine case
12:15
and the other is the sketch relationship itself.
12:17
If we right click on the work plane and disable the adaptive option and we begin moving this around,
12:23
note that the component still moves with it.
12:26
However, if we right click on the part and we disable Adaptive,
12:29
this is going to allow them to move individually.
12:32
However, the work lane does still have flush constraints added,
12:36
which keeps the parts on playing with each other.
12:39
So if you begin to build assemblies in this way by selecting geometry on other components,
12:45
you need to be careful about the adaptive relationship between sketch relationships,
12:50
between creating projected geometry, and also things like planes and constraints or references that are created automatically.
12:58
You can always toggle these off if you need to,
13:01
but just remember that the associativity is there for a reason and it should be used intentionally, not accidentally.
Video transcript
00:02
Insert and position components in an assembly.
00:05
After completing this video, you'll be able to place a part, Content Center part, or an iPart into an assembly,
00:11
replace select or all parts or sub-assemblies, and constrain parts within an assembly based on design intent.
00:19
To get started, in Inventor, we want to open up two supply data sets,
00:24
EngineMK2.IAM, which is in the assembly's engine MK2 subfolder, and the file iPart Angle.IPT, which is in the main project folder.
00:35
When we get the engine assembly open, we want to expand the Representations and make sure that we're on the Primary view
00:43
and that we're in the Primary position.
00:46
Let's go ahead and move this to the center of the screen using the Home button.
00:50
We're also going to go to our New and Create a New Assembly.
00:54
We're going to create a new empty assembly, and we want to begin by exploring some of our Place commands.
01:00
We have Place, Place from Content Center, Place Imported CAD files, and Place iLogic Component.
01:06
For the purposes of this video, we're going to focus on Content Center and Place.
01:11
First, when we select Content Center, we'll be placing a predetermined model from our Content Center library.
01:18
We can navigate to many different parts, such as the structural shapes channels, and select one of the channel options.
01:25
When we select OK, we'll be prompted to determine what size channel we want to use and the length of that channel.
01:31
In this case, we'll use the 3 X 3.5, and we'll set it to 48 inches in length and select OK.
01:38
We then need to pick a location to save the file, which will be an Inventor part file.
01:42
We'll select Save in our project, and let's zoom out a little bit, right click and Place Grounded at Origin.
01:49
When we Place Grounded at Origin, next, we can hit Escape to turn off the Place command from the Content Center.
01:56
We've now placed the content center component, and when we take a look inside of our browser,
02:00
we can see that there's a small pin icon, and this is because it was pinned or grounded at the origin.
02:07
There's also a set of brackets with a black dot, meaning that this object is fully constrained.
02:12
If instead we go to Place, and this time we're going to place our iPart angle and select Open,
02:21
notice that it gives us a warning about the unit system.
02:24
We'll simply select Yes, and then we get a Place Standard iPart option.
02:28
If we're placing a component that is an iPart or an iAssembly, we'll have a Keys,Tree,
02:35
and Table tab in the dialog before we place that component.
02:38
We can go to our table and select various options inside of our iPart factory.
02:44
From here, we can left click to place the component or we can right click and ground it at the origin.
02:49
For this instance, let's go ahead and left click just to place it somewhere in the design,
02:53
and then we can select Dismiss to place that single iPart.
02:57
Notice the icon is different because this is an iPart and also notice that we have a set of brackets with a clear dot that's not filled in.
03:06
This tells us that this component is under constrained.
03:09
It's free to move about until we place additional relationships on it.
03:13
If we expand this, note that we have a table here because this is an iPart.
03:19
Let's go ahead and move over to our engine assembly.
03:22
When working in larger assemblies, often times we need to make use of things like selection filters
03:27
to make it easier for us to replace certain components.
03:30
If we go ahead and rotate the engine around and we take a look at the top,
03:34
there are four individual bolts, and if we select one of those bolts,
03:38
right click and go to our Selection Filters, we can select all occurrences of that same bolt.
03:45
And we also have additional options if we select other hardware.
03:48
For example, on this engine cover, right-click and go to our Selection Filter.
03:52
We can select based on component size or if it's constrained to the same object.
03:57
When we select Constrained To, notice that it's selecting the blue object that that hardware was constrained to.
04:04
If we want to replace the hardware, we can right click and we can select all of those components,
04:10
select all occurrences, notice that they're highlighted in our browser,
04:14
and then we can right click and we can replace those occurrences.
04:17
If the hardware in this instance came from our content center, we can select it, right click, and use Replace from Content Center.
04:26
When we go to Replace from Content Center, we've got various options.
04:30
In this case, we may decide to use a separate piece of hardware that has a hole through it for safety wiring.
04:36
We can select OK and we can allow to replace all occurrences.
04:41
If we move this out of the way and select Apply, it should apply to all four occurrences that we have in this assembly.
04:48
Notice here that we've likely made a mistake and the hardware is not the correct size,
04:53
so we would need to go back in and replace all of these from the content center.
04:58
It's always important that we validate the size of hardware that we need when we're replacing it inside of an assembly.
05:04
We'll go ahead once again and say Replace All and apply the new size.
05:09
Now that we have a little bit more knowledge on these assemblies, let's go ahead and start a new assembly one more time.
05:14
This time we're going to practice using relationships and understand more about joints, constraints, and assemble tools.
05:21
We're going to begin first by selecting Place, and this time we want to navigate to our assemblies folder,
05:27
navigate to Engine Mark 2, and we want to locate our engine case.
05:33
We need to scroll down until we find Engine Case.IPT.
05:38
Note that in this design, there are going to be two engine cases.
05:41
There's an engine case rear and an engine case side.
05:45
Let's go ahead and use the engine case rear in this example.
05:48
We're going to right click and place grounded origin as this is our first component.
05:53
We'll hit Escape and note the orientation of the component is slightly off.
05:58
Iin this case, it's going to be fine for what we're doing,
06:01
but often times when we are inserting a component, you may want to use some of the additional options that allow you to rotate it.
06:07
For example, let's go ahead and reselect the engine case rear.
06:12
Before we ground it at the origin, we have options to rotate about X,Y, or Z.
06:18
If I select Rotate about X, I can position it so that it's in the correct orientation,
06:23
and then we can make sure that it's pointing with the cylinder up and grounded at the origin.
06:29
This does take a little bit of time depending on the orientation of the model,
06:34
but then we can right click and place grounded at origin and then hit Escape.
06:38
Now we can simply delete and remove the first instance.
06:42
Now that we've got our engine case grounded and placed at the origin, it's time to add a couple of other components.
06:48
Under the Place menu, we're going to take a look for the engine sleeve and the engine piston.
06:54
So we'll scroll down until we find Engine Sleeve Rear and the Engine Piston.
07:01
Select Engine Sleeve Rear and simply place it off to the side for right now and hit Escape after we've placed a single instance.
07:08
And next we'll look for the Engine Piston.
07:11
Once we've got the piston, let's go ahead and place one instance and hit Escape.
07:17
When we're taking a look at putting multiple components together in an assembly,
07:21
it's important to understand that we've got several options.
07:24
We have Joints, Constraints, and the Assemble tool.
07:27
Constrain and Assemble are generally considered legacy options, and Joint is a newer option for putting components together.
07:35
When we think about applying these joints or constraints, we're considering the degrees of freedom of the components in our assembly.
07:42
With using the Constraint option or the Assemble option, we take away degrees of freedom gradually.
07:50
When we use the Joint option, we're defining the component position as well as the motion with a single operation.
07:57
Let's go ahead and take a look at Constrained first.
07:60
When we take a look at Constrained, we've got four sets of tabs, Assembly, Motion, Transitional, and Constraint Set.
08:08
For the purposes of this video, we're going to focus solely on Assembly.
08:12
We've got assembly options for mating faces together at a specific angle, a tangent relation, insert, or symmetry.
08:21
For something like our engine sleeve, we would likely want to place it using the insert option.
08:27
We would select the position, in this case the bottom edge of our sleeve and the upper edge of our cylinder,
08:33
and then we would apply this.
08:35
It's important to note that we would want to make sure that the ports are in the correct orientation,
08:40
and we can see that they are as we rotate the model around.
08:45
Everything appears to be lined up okay.
08:48
Let's go ahead and hit Cancel because we only want to use that relationship,
08:52
in this case, the insert constraint, specifically for the sleeve in the engine.
08:56
You'll notice that we are able to rotate this around, and I'm going to use Control Z to undo that rotation.
09:03
If we ever need to make any adjustments, we can always go into our relationship folder,
09:08
or we can expand the component and take a look at the relationships applied.
09:12
We can right click and we can Edit, noting that we have an option here to lock rotation.
09:18
In this case, a single insert constraint would allow us to both place the component and lock its rotation.
09:25
Next, let's take a look at adding the piston.
09:28
In this case, we're going to use Joint.
09:31
The joint will allow us to use an automatic type based on our selection, or we can preselect the type of motion we intend.
09:38
In this case we potentially would have a cylindrical joint.
09:42
This would allow the piston to move up and down in the cylinder
09:45
as well as rotate until another joint or constraint was limiting its motion.
09:49
In that case, it would be something like the connecting rod and the crankshaft.
09:53
We could also use other options like slider that would allow it to move along a single axis,
09:59
but that would restrict the revolute motion of the piston inside the cylinder.
10:04
In this case, let's select cylindrical.
10:07
We would first select our component, noting that there's a green dot that's going to represent the location of the joint.
10:13
I'm going to make sure that this is on the top face of the piston.
10:16
Next, we would select the position where it needs to go.
10:20
Once we put it in position, notice that it's upside down.
10:24
This means that we need to reverse its orientation.
10:26
We can do this by inverting its alignment based on our selections.
10:30
Let's go ahead and rotate this around and we'll select OK.
10:35
Now the piston is inside the cylinder.
10:37
We can move it up and down and rotate it around.
10:40
So once again, when we think about putting components together in an assembly,
10:44
we can think about using a joint which allows us to use the position and the degrees of freedom defined in that single joint,
10:51
or we can use things like assemble or constrain to gradually remove those degrees of freedom.
10:56
The last thing that we want to talk about in the context of this assembly is adaptivity.
11:02
When we create a new component inside of an assembly, in this case, I'm going to leave this as part 4.
11:09
We're going to say OK, and then we're going to position it.
11:13
If I select a reference, for example, the face of this part, and then we start a new sketch by selecting the face of our part,
11:21
let's go ahead and select here.
11:23
Then we project our geometry and we use this to create, let's say, an engine cover.
11:32
I'm going to go ahead and select all the geometry.
11:35
We're going to have this go out 1/4 inch,
11:38
and then we'll return back to the top level of our assembly.
11:42
This cover has a symbol in the browser that represents adaptivity.
11:47
What this means is that if I move the engine, move the case, move the geometry in any way that this part is going to move with it.
11:55
We can see this by right clicking on the engine case and disabling the grounded option
12:01
if I move it around note that the engine cover is moving with the case.
12:05
There are two adaptive relationships here that we need to identify.
12:09
One is going to be the work plane that was created when we selected the face of the engine case
12:15
and the other is the sketch relationship itself.
12:17
If we right click on the work plane and disable the adaptive option and we begin moving this around,
12:23
note that the component still moves with it.
12:26
However, if we right click on the part and we disable Adaptive,
12:29
this is going to allow them to move individually.
12:32
However, the work lane does still have flush constraints added,
12:36
which keeps the parts on playing with each other.
12:39
So if you begin to build assemblies in this way by selecting geometry on other components,
12:45
you need to be careful about the adaptive relationship between sketch relationships,
12:50
between creating projected geometry, and also things like planes and constraints or references that are created automatically.
12:58
You can always toggle these off if you need to,
13:01
but just remember that the associativity is there for a reason and it should be used intentionally, not accidentally.
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
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