Demonstrate knowledge of adaptivity, components, relationships, and flexibility

00:02

Demonstrate knowledge of adaptivity, component relationships, and flexibility.

00:07

After completing this video, you'll be able to identify a feature's relationship to other features or sketches.

00:16

Inside of Inventor, we want to begin by opening up two datasets:

00:19

Engine Mark 2.iam, which can be found in the assembly subfolder under the engine MK2 subfolder,

00:26

and Port Plate.ipt, which can be found at the top level of our project.

00:30

Let's start with the Port Plate.ipt.

00:32

We want to talk about adaptivity and how components are adaptive

00:36

when new components are created in an assembly based on references.

00:40

So to do this, we want to begin by starting a new standard assembly and we're going to insert our port plate.

00:48

We'll right-click and place grounded at origin and then hit ESC to stop placing new components.

00:55

We then want to create a new component.

00:58

This is going to be an adaptive component that will be at the top level.

01:02

We'll say OK, and we're going to place it by selecting that top face.

01:07

We'll begin by creating a new sketch, once again selecting the top face of our part

01:12

and using project geometry to bring the entire part face and finish.

01:17

From here, we're going to extrude a gasket for this part.

01:20

The gasket's going to be .05 inches thick and we could say OK and then return.

01:26

Note that the workplane as well as the part is adaptive.

01:31

Let's right-click and change the visibility of the workplane as it's not needed right now.

01:35

If we go back into Port Plate and we make adjustments to this design,

01:39

for example, adding some fillets to this edge, this edge, this one, and this one here.

01:46

We'll say OK, we'll save the design and go back to our assembly.

01:50

Note that inside of our assembly, the port has updated.

01:54

However, the opening inside of our new part is not updated.

01:59

Once we update the part and assembly, notice that the port's updated, but the part itself didn't.

02:06

In some instances, making minor changes to parts that are adaptive will easily update,

02:11

but in other cases, we may need to go back and make edits or adjustments.

02:15

In this case, what we need to do is go back into our sketch, make sure that the geometry is projected,

02:23

and then go back to our extrusion and then simply hold down CTRL and deselect that area.

02:30

Making drastic changes to a design, even though adding a fillet doesn't seem like a drastic change,

02:36

can result in certain features not rebuilding properly.

02:39

So make sure that you do pay close attention when you're using adaptivity inside your designs.

02:44

Let's take another look at the Engine Mark 2.

02:47

We've already seen how we can use Promote and Demote,

02:50

but in this case, let's go ahead and select the engine, piston, wrist pin, and con rod,

02:54

right-click and go to our component and select Demote.

02:58

We're going to just leave this as Assembly 10 and say Yes.

03:03

What we've done here is we've created a subassembly.

03:06

When we go to our representations and we go to our position representations to Free,

03:12

which should allow the piston to move freely, it doesn't.

03:15

Whenever we have subassemblies that have motions or joints inside of those subassemblies,

03:20

we need to make sure that we set them to Flexible.

03:23

When we set it to flexible, it's allowed to rotate and it behaves based on all of the other joints and constraints placed on it in its subassembly.

03:32

Even though this worked at the top level, as soon as we used Demote and created our subassembly,

03:37

we needed to set it to Flexible in order for it to work.

03:40

Note that the icon is different here. When we have a flexible subassembly.

03:44

Many of the icons that we see inside of the browser in our assemblies will indicate information about those components.

03:52

For example, this component is table-driven.

03:55

If we expand it, we can see there's a table that can determine what the component's going to be.

03:60

As we take a look at other components, we can see certain components are hidden while others are suppressed.

04:06

Components that have a pin on them are grounded to the origin.

04:09

If we go back to our view representations, back to primary, you can see several of the components' visibility has changed.

04:16

However, the suppressed components are still suppressed.

04:19

Let's go back to our primary position and make sure that we're on our primary view representation.

04:25

The last thing that we're going to take a look at real quick is going to a feature in a part, right-clicking, and taking a look at its relationships.

04:33

We've seen this before in a previous video,

04:35

but it's important to note that the relationships between certain features and sketches

04:39

is an important aspect of how parametric models are created.

04:44

Making sure that you understand how these features are related is going to indicate how they're updated based on model changes.

04:51

Not only does this affect the individual part,

04:53

but there will be a downstream effect when we start to talk about adaptivity between these parts and assemblies.

04:60

As you begin to work with Inventor, make sure that you are comfortable with flexibility and adaptivity and assemblies,

05:06

and make sure that you understand how you can use those to your own benefit.