Hi,

Its good so far, covering various topics of interest.  This post on keyboard shortcut, has given me excellent productivity at my work, so I would like to share the same with you. . .

Keyboard Shortcut Guide

Function Keys:

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The Engineer’s Notebook is a very effective tool that gives you the ability to create notes and directly stores them as part of a model.

You can attach a note to an edge, sketch, feature, part, or other selection in the model. Each note consists of a comment box and a view of the model. To start the Engineers Notebook, select a part in the window, right-click, and select Create Note. When you add the first note to a model, the program creates a notebook. You can add comment boxes or additional views to a note or add more notes to the notebook. You can use the Engineer’s Notebook to save the history of development or to provide reminders for project designers. Examples of notes include design strategy, reason for a design decision, manufacturing instructions, or information from a test or FEA calculation.

Notes can contain links to external files, such as spreadsheets, word processing documents, graphics, or audio files.

To better understand the process of adding Engineers Notebook, watch this simple video

Hi,

Are you interested in attending a webinar, hosted by Autodesk India User Community ?

Take this survey – Click Here

What is Inventor MemProbe?
This is a simple utility designed to monitor memory use in the system, specifically information relevant to inventor.

Where to find it?
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2010\Bin\memprobe.exe

What does Memprobe do??
It works / serves as a memory monitor which allows users to watch their “Free” memory, & save their work accordingly. You can also set alarms and do more. Play with the tool to learn more . . .

See Image below

With the release of 2010 products from Autodesk, all the User Interface has changed its look and feel.

User interface design is important for several reasons.  First of all the more intuitive the user interface the easier it is to use, and the easier it is to use and the less expensive to use it.  The better the user interface the easier it is to train people to use it, reducing your training costs.  The better your user interface the less help people will need to use it, reducing your support costs.  The better your user interface the more your users will like to use it, increasing their satisfaction with the work that you have done.

UI Design Principles

Let’s start with the fundamentals of user interface design. Constantine and Lockwood describe a collection of principles for improving the quality of your user interface design. These principles are

1. The structure principle. Your design should organize the user interface purposefully, in meaningful and useful ways based on clear, consistent models that are apparent and recognizable to users, putting related things together and separating unrelated things, differentiating dissimilar things and making similar things resemble one another. The structure principle is concerned with your overall user interface architecture.
2. The simplicity principle. Your design should make simple, common tasks simple to do, communicating clearly and simply in the user’s own language, and providing good shortcuts that are meaningfully related to longer procedures.
3. The visibility principle. Your design should keep all needed options and materials for a given task visible without distracting the user with extraneous or redundant information. Good designs don’t overwhelm users with too many alternatives or confuse them with unneeded information.
4. The feedback principle. Your design should keep users informed of actions or interpretations, changes of state or condition, and errors or exceptions that are relevant and of interest to the user through clear, concise, and unambiguous language familiar to users.
5. The tolerance principle. Your design should be flexible and tolerant, reducing the cost of mistakes and misuse by allowing undoing and redoing, while also preventing errors wherever possible by tolerating varied inputs and sequences and by interpreting all reasonable actions reasonable.
6. The reuse principle. Your design should reuse internal and external components and behaviors, maintaining consistency with purpose rather than merely arbitrary consistency, thus reducing the need for users to rethink and remember.

Back to CAD, Autodesk Inventor 2010 has the option of changing the user interface between the old and the new.

Access User Interface

User Interface in Autodesk Inventor can be made to toggle between the old and new, by moving to:

Tools > Application Option > Colors Tab > Interface Style -

You can now toggle between the Classic and Ribbon User Interface. Hope this helps you to recall the old memories you had, when working with Autodesk Inventor 2009, 2008 . . .

You get a default message during the interface change as show below

Ribbon User Interface Layout for Autodesk Inventor 2010

Classic User Interface Layout for Autodesk Inventor 2010

How long have you been using Autodesk Inventor ?

If you answered many years then, the tooltip appearance might be some times irritating, as you hover over each command, a pop up information appears, showing you what the tool does with a simple figure. See below

However, on the other side, if you are a new user and want to learn what each tool does, then this might be of great help as it provides complete info about the tool in the display.

If in case you need to toggle between (Enable / Disable) tooltip appearance, then follow this simple step

Accessing tooltip Appearance:

Tools > Application Options > General Tab > Tooltip Appearance

Now, you can move to the Tooltip Appearance option under General Tab

Watch a simple video to understand better . . .

Short URL – http://wp.me/pubDd-oW

Autodesk Inventor has many options to enable commands, either by keyboard or by mouse clicks.

In this video tutorial we shall see how to activate commands using keyboard. To enable command activation by keyboard in Inventor we need to first click on the Alt Key.

Note: To type without using the keyboard

Watch this simple video to know more . . .

Most of you must be aware of the polygon command in Autodesk Inventor 2010.

Use the Polygon command on the Sketch tab to create polygon shapes. Polygons can have up to 120 sides.

1. On the ribbon, click Sketch tab > Draw panel > Polygon.
2. Select the inscribed or circumscribed icon in the Polygon dialog box.
3. Specify the number of edges.
4. Click the center of the polygon.
5. Drag to determine the size of the polygon.
6. Click Here to watch a video

To quit creating polygons, press Esc, click another command, or click Done in the Polygon dialog box

To construct the name of a polygon with more than 20 and less than 100 edges, combine the prefixes as follows

• Watch a video to know more about polygon command in Autodesk Inventor 2010
• Click Here to know more

Assembly Features:

These are just like part features, except they can affect multiple parts, are created in the assembly environment, and are saved in the assembly file. Assembly feature definitions are not passed down to the component level. (Not saved in part level)

What are assembly features ?

These are features that are developed in assembly mode, that define a single logical feature that spans multiple parts, such as an extrusion cut through multiple connecting plates etc . . .

Further, these help in defining a specific manufacturing process, such as match drilling or post-machining.

Where can Assembly features be used ?

These can be used when match drilling and pinning is carried out, the holes can only be drilled after everything is positioned and sized as required.

Note:  Assembly features include chamfers, fillets, sweeps, revolves, extrudes, and holes. They also include the work features and sketches used to create them. You can edit, add to, suppress, or delete assembly features. You can also rollback the state of the assembly features and add and remove components that participate in the feature.

To better understand this concept of Assembly features, watch this video below . . .