Publishing on Budget

8/4/2019 Publishing on Budget

1/28

Using Autodesk Inventor to Create Tech Pubs on a

Shoestring BudgetKevin Robinson INCAT

MA105-5 In this session, youll learn how to take your CAD data and utilize it forthose outside of engineering, such as sales/marketing professionals, customers, and fieldengineers. Well use TechSmith SnagIt, Autodesk Inventor data, and Autodesk DesignReview to create the engineering support information that is always needed.

About the Speaker:Kevin is an Autodesk pre-sales consultant at INCAT Systems, an Autodesk Reseller, working with customersto help them understand how to leverage Autodesk technology. Prior to INCAT, Kevin worked for Autodesk,creating sales tools for the Manufacturing Solutions Division. Kevin is a certified expert in both Inventor andSolidWorks. He got his start in the steel industry using AutoCAD and Mechanical Desktop where he designedslide gates. Kevin has 10 years experience applying CAD technology as an end user, administrator, technicalsupport, trainer, demo jock, marketing, and sales engineering using Autodesk software. He has taught orpresented to over 1000 users on Autodesk products, helping them realize their potential.

[email protected]


2/28


3/28

Using Autodesk Inventor to Create Tech Pubs on a

Shoestring Budget


4/28

Introduction

In a galaxy light years away living in a cubical with dim lighting back when Jedi Kevin

had a real job doing mechanical design work. Jedi Kevin was asked to create imagesand screenshots of his AutoCAD based designs for service manuals and marketingbrochures. In additional to his unmatched AutoCAD Drafting skills Kevin had anotherJedi weapon called TechSmith SnagIt to create images faster and more effective thanhis co-workers using only print screenFADE MUSIC OUT..CUT.

As you can see this is some serious stuff

At some point within you engineering career I am sure you have been asked to shareyour designs, drawings, and cad data with someone outside of engineering. Within this class weare going to walk through a few different types of methods of prepping your Inventor modelsand drawings for optimal use downstream. And we will all cover a wonderful third party

application from TechSmith to assist sharing your design even more.

Links to tools other than Inventor discussed in this class:

www.techsmith.com Check out their

www.autodesk.com/DWF


5/28

Class Overview

This class is broken out into four main areas:

Inventor Core: Using the everyday commands and settings within Inventor to createmodels and drawings for almost any need downstream.

o Application Options

o Viewing Tools

o Working the model

o Drawing tools

TechSmith Snag It: This nifty and affordable add-on allows any engineer to seem like

Technical Publication Ninja, but it cant help poor technical writing.if that applies to you.

o Basic screen grab and tweaking

o Profiles

o Kevins Favorites

Time Based Grabs

Spotlight / Magnify

Underlay

o Batch editing

Inventor Plus: Using two of Inventors additional feature sets Inventor Studio andPresentation Files for even more power when sharing your designs outside engineering.

Autodesk Design Review and DWF: Using this free application from Autodesk alongwith the DWF format you can empower even those without Inventor to access powerful

CAD data for their needs.


6/28

Inventor Core

Inventor Application Options

Within the everyday workflows of Inventor parts, assemblies, and drawings there are tons ofimportant settings and commands to be aware of in order to best represent any downstream

need. Lets review these in more detail:

1. General Tab Here there a few basics that you need to tweak to get started on cleaning

up the modeling screen and a few other adjustments

a. Show 3d Indicator UNCHECKED - This little tool tip is nice for the beginner butonce you are comfy with 3d its value is zilch, but this needs to be set to off in

order to have your modeling environment with cad data only.

b. Enable Pre-Highlight UNCHECKED Turn this off for a slight boost in selectionperformance, but for our purposes it helps eliminate focus on a single part unless

needed.


7/28

2. Colors Tab These controls are going to allow a number of graphically tweaks

a. Color Scheme PRESENTATION Choose this scheme as it is the friendliest for

screen captures

b. Background Color 1 Color This will be white by default, most common for

technical publications.

3. Display Tab There is few hundred possible combinations on this tab, so I will cover justa few basics, but be sure to check these out.

a. Shaded Active Edges This will allow you to toggle ON or OFF your edges and

the color

b. Show Hidden model edges as solid UNCHECK This will allow your 3d model to

showed dashed lines while in 3d


8/28

Inventor Viewing Tools

We use these tools daily to navigate around our models so what else could there be that your

not using. Well there are a couple important workflows that allow us to get around as needed forthe best screen captures.

1. Glass Box (Common View) This tool which is accessed while in the Rotate Command byhitting Space Bar and or Right Clicking allows instant access to all the standard views with

just a s single click.

2. Multi View (New Window) Simply add more camera views of your model using

Window, New Window Command.


9/28

Working the Model

This next section focuses on the various tools you need to be comfortable in order to work with

your dataset in order to rapidly get to various model states for your required screen captures.

1. Assembly Status The basics of turning part visibility

on it off, plus a few more cool items.

a. Visibility Basically you either see it or you dont

b. Enabled Still kind of see the model, but youcant select it on screen, must use the assembly

browser

2. Selection Filters These toolsallow you to control what yourepicking within the part or theassembly. This list can also beaccessed by hitting CTRL + Right

Click.


10/28

3. Selection Tools This menu will allow numerous options for quickly parsing down your

dataset to exactly what you need.

4. Move and Rotate Commands Take your assembly apart for quick snapshots of youparts without worrying about creating presentation files. Both of these commands willoverride the current assembly constraints until the Update command is ran.


11/28

5. View Representations Save camera angle, model colors, part visibility settings so theyare one click away at all times within the assembly. This is also great for drawings andPresentation files as well.

6. Positional Representations Similar to View Reps except that capture a parts range ofmotion for describing and showing motion.


12/28

Drawing Tools

This last section of Inventor Core will cover the need to settings and tricks within the drawing

environment to aid in the production of supporting downstream needs.

1. Drawing Document Settings

a. Sheet Color Be sure to change your sheet color to white for the most flexibility

downstream.

b. Bitmap and Image Fidelity Adjust these two settings so your shaded view can

look the best.


13/28

2. View Settings Each view type as a number of tweaks you can make in order to get your

necessary images for your manual.

3. Technical Publication Templates Create an IDW template that captures all your favoritedimensions style, borders and Sheet Formats

a. Sheet Formats allow you to capturea reusable configuration of view

layouts and title blocks for rapiddrawing creation.


14/28

TechSmith SnagIt

Basic Screen grabs and Tweaking

During the install SnagIt will ask you if you want to have minimized during windows start up, thisis a YES. Basically SnagIt hangs out waiting to be called upon for your screen capturing needs

with a simple keyboard shortcut or right-click Capture.

Lets go ahead and start discussing some of the basics of using the wonderful capture tool.


15/28

Your first screen capture

1. Region Select Out of the gate you will get to select a region on screen for which you

want to make an image of. This is already light years ahead of old school print screen. Assoon as you fire up the command, you will be prompted to drag and drop a regionaround whatever you want. After you select the default image tweaking window pop upfor whatever you post capturing needs might be.

2. Tweaking Once the SnagIt Editor window pops up you can do almost anything usengineers would ever need post capture. Simple text callouts, cropping, captions,highlighting, drop shadows. You name it; it can do it one way or another.


16/28

Profiles

Ok once you get use to the basic Grab and Tweak workflow you can move to a few more

types of SnagIt workflows using Profiles. These Profiles are pre-configured types of capturingcombinations that can be changes are added to for your needs. Be sure to try a few of thesethat are helpful in everyday non-CAD related stuffthe Text Capture and Scrolling Window arereally cool.


17/28

Kevins SnagIt Favorites

Basically I have been using this wonderful tool for about 10 years dailyso I have a few

favorites that apply to my daily needs so I wanted to share those with you.

1. Time Based Grabs Basically I will setup a profile with whatever interval I want to use forcontinuous screen grabs, like every 15 seconds. Then combine the timer with AutomaticFile Naming and your all set


18/28

2. Spotlight & Magnify Many times when doing a screen capture I will want to callattention to a certain area of the user interface. This can be done using basic markup,but I like some of the tweaks you can make with this tool. Check out the timer setup

below and how I can fade out the rest of the screen for context.

a. Magnify Takes original size and scales it up

b. Dim Grays out the rest as shown below

c. Blur Fancy way to really have focus on a single area

d. Drop Shadow Places a shadow around the selected region

e. Position If you want to create more of an offset from the original area to help

with the effect


19/28

3. Underlay Using this tool you can take two images and combine them to make a uniqueimage after one has been altered from the original and or two images that have adifferent effect applied and you want them combined. I like to use this tool for combining

the Realistic output from Inventor Studio with the Illustration Output from Inventor studioas well. Location of the tool below, example of using the underlay on the next page.


20/28

Underlay Example:


21/28

4. Batch Editing For every post capturing tweak or adjustment you want to make you cantake a collection of images and run them all through a Batch Image edit car wash foreasy adjustments. I use this all the time for adding drop shadows and changing of file

types from BMP to PNG as an example.


22/28

Inventor Plus

Inventor Studio and Inventor Presentation Files

Both of these tools are subsets of the Inventor Package. I am going to highlight a few thingswithin each as it relates to our topic of creating data we need for communicating downstreamand outside of engineering, not the subset as a whole. Lets start with a few items from Inventor

Studio.

Inventor Studio

1. Camera Creation Within Inventor Studio the camera tool is used for setting up pre-configured viewing orientations for both rendering and animations. Similar to ViewRepresentations from earlier both with a slightly quicker method for saved view and theaddition of a rendering if desired. You can simply adjust your model view and then RightClick on the camera icon in the browser and choose Create Camera from View


23/28

2. Render or SnagIt Once you have a few Cameras setup you capture some images outusing Render or SnagIt. If you choose render you have a ton more options for addingthings like lighting and backgrounds to your images that are not that easy from the core

assembly modeling area.

Note: If you decide to do a SnagIt screen grab here you will need to turn off the

Visibility for the lights shown below:


24/28

3. Render Types: New in Inventor 2008 there are now two Render Types:

a. Realistic For the traditional rendering applying lighting and color styles

b. Illustration This is more of a comics book look and feel.


25/28

Inventor Presentation Files

Many of you have probably been in this environment a few times for creation of exploded views.

Everything you already know about the creation of exploded view still applies and can be usedfor creating great screen captures for downstream. I just want to point a few tricks that mighthelp you even more.

1. Auto Explode Use this to create a large offset between your parts, and then use the

Timer setting in SnagIt to go through and grab images of everything you need very fast.

Example Auto Explode:


26/28

Autodesk Design Review and DWF

Every few months Autodesk releases a newer version of something DWF related. There are tonsand tons of ways to leverage Autodesk Design Review and the DWF format. For the purpose ofour discussion so far within this class we can use Autodesk Design Review with SnagIt to allownon CAD people to make there own captures. Below are a few high level things the DWF formatwill allow you to capture from your Inventor models that will allow the marketing group to taketheir own screen capture without nagging you. And a few setting in Autodesk Design Review

that will make those non CAD people more effective.

1. Things DWF can capture:

a. Drawings and 3d models Basically when youPublish DWF fromInventor you have a ton

of choices:

b. Assembly Instructions From your IPN files thetask you create for eachstep of the process canalso be viewed

downstream, more timehere will keep themarketing crew away.

c. Assembly PositionalRepresentations If yourecall from earlier thePositional Reps. Youcreate within andassembly can also be

stored within a DWF fileso anyone can see how

your assembly functions.


27/28

2. Autodesk Design Review Settings and Non-CAD User Tools:

a. Background Color The default is not very screen capture friendly, so be sure tochange it to the basic White

b. Gradient Setting Turn OFF


28/28

c. Non CAD user ease of use tools: Be sure to show them how to turn parts on and

off, use the built in stand view tools, and maybe even the steering view controls.

Documents

Publishing on Budget