Edit Complex Inventor Positional Representations in Excel

Positional Representations capture kinematic "snapshots" of assemblies to allow for motion studies and evaluation of an assembly in various positions. Positional Representations are saved in the parent assembly and can be retrieved at any time for further analysis or modification.

LABS - PointLinker for Inventor

Inventor can import point data from an Excel file, but once the data has been imported, the link with the Excel file is not retained. If the user then updates the point data in the Excel file, the data must be manually re-imported and the associated model re-constructed. This is a time consuming and isnefficient exercise. The Point Linker for Inventor tool allows Inventor users to import points from an Excel file, and retain a link to that file. Users can import data (as with the existing command), update with new data, or resolve to another Excel file.

This tool is available for Inventor 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.

You can try the PointLinker for yourself at:

http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/ADN_plugins/catalog/

How to Insert an Excel Spreadsheet on a Drawing

There are a few different ways of inserting a Spreadsheet into an Inventor drawing, however we always recommend one method over the others, as shown below.

• Go to the Annotate TAB > Table Panel > select the General table feature.

Use Excel to extract a BOM from your Inventor Assembly

Below is an example of an Excel macro, which allows you to choose an Inventor Assembly and pull some BOM information in at the active cell position. This example just pulls in the part number, description and quantity but you can modify it to pull through the property information you require.

Click here to download a Text file containing the VBA code that you will need for the Excel macro.