Mix up your AutoCAD Ribbon Panels

The whole AutoCAD interface is highly customisable, but mostly requires users to delve into the CUI (Custom User Interface) to make changes. An easy, quick change that everyone can use is to move Panels off the Ribbon when you need certain tools or even move Panels onto a Ribbon TAB where you use them more often (more of a drag and drop affair).

• Simply click on the dark bar along the bottom of any Panel, then drag down onto the workspace. This will detach the Panel and create a Floating Toolbar.

Quicker AutoCAD Selection with Fastselect

There are a lot of different selection methods in AutoCAD, but a powerful tool which often gets overlooked is Fastselect (FS).

This tool enables you to select a piece of geometry and then automatically pick all geometry touching it.

• To do this type fs at the command line, then select a piece of geometry as prompted, by default this will be the geometry immediately connected to the selected piece.

Autodesk Customer Success - Gaoh Energy

Gaoh Energy, an ambitious start-up focused on a range of renewable energy sectors, is using Digital Prototyping software from Autodesk, Inc., to help deliver innovative solutions into the onshore and offshore wind markets and the tidal energy sector.

Gaoh Energy joined the Autodesk Clean Tech Partner Program, which provides software for emerging clean tech companies in North America, Europe, Japan and Singapore, on the recommendation of Autodesk reseller, Micro Concepts, which provides its IT support. Since joining the program, in November 2010, the company has been using AutoCAD and increasingly making use of the Autodesk Product Design Suite, including Autodesk Inventor and Autodesk Showcase. It uses the Autodesk software in particular to provide design and engineering solutions to clients developing wind farms and demonstration sites.

Autodesk Customer Success - Kocurek

Kocurek Excavators Ltd has been awarded the Manufacturer's Innovation award at the annual Demolition Awards in Amsterdam.

The company saw off stiff competition from the likes of Liebherr, Trevi Benne and Montovanibenne to have its HDI Beast named as the industry's greatest innovation of the year.

David Kocurek (left) and Brian Carroll (right) receive their award from IDE president, John Woodward (centre).

Sheet Metal Flat Pattern Export

After creating a Sheet Metal Flat Pattern you are likely to want this sending to a supplier or CNC machine in DXF, DWG format. You could create a Drawing and do a Save Copy As (AutoCAD DWG or DXF), however you can export a Flat Pattern straight from the Model file in SAT, DXF or DWG.

To do this open your Sheet Metal part, which has a Flat Pattern, then right click on the top level of the Flat Pattern > Save Copy As. Set the required format (SAT, DXF, DWG), location and name. For a SAT file you can specify the Version. For DXF, DWG you will be prompted with various settings you can adjust to get the required output, see screenshot below.

Tip: If you need to export a DXF without the Bend Lines, you can turn off the Layer in the DXF Export Options dialogue (Layer TAB). However some applications will still bring in the Bend Lines, for these situations you can create a Post Process xml which deletes the Layers for the Bend Lines.

Project to Surface

From time to time you might want to create something more complex than a Solid with a perpendicular Cut feature. A useful, but often overlooked tool in Inventor is the 3D Sketch, which contains some useful features, such as Project to Surface.

This feature allows you to project a 2D Sketch to a Face/Surface, allowing you to place sketches exactly on a face to use as a Sweep path, Split Line, Loft Rail etc. See the steps below to get yourself started with 3D Sketches.

• Create your Model and 2D Sketch geometry

Set Units to Metric and mm

With the inclusion of Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2012 in many of the new Design Suites, there are more people starting to experiment with this product. We thought it might be useful for you to know where the Units settings are to help get you setup correctly.

• To customise the default Inch Units, go to the Customize menu > Units Setup.

Vault Explorer - Open Error

After selecting a file in Vault Explorer and double clicking on it or right click > Open, you see the following message:

This can happen if another program has become associated with Inventor assembly files. In this situation, the message was caused by importing an Inventor file into Autodesk Showcase 2012, which although is not a qualifying CAD application for Vault, it is still a part of the Product Design Suite.

The workaround is to close Vault Explorer and Inventor and re-start Inventor. This will re-register Inventor with the Operating System.

This is an extract from the Cracking the Vault, Manufacturing Community Blog.