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Look at This Motley Crew: Sheet Metal and Multi-Bodies in Autodesk Inventor
25 Feb, 2010 By: Anthony DullAvatech Tricks Tutorial: With the help of a workaround, you can use multi-body tools in the sheet metal environment.
Editor's note: This tutorial courtesy of Avatech Solutions.
It has always been my opinion that "skeletal modeling" is the most effective method of assembly creation in 3D CAD, so when Autodesk introduced multi-bodies in Inventor 2010, I was energized — a whole new methodology that allows you to build your entire assembly within the context of a single part file! I was devastated, however, when I got a warning dialog box saying I could not use the multi-body tools in the sheet metal environment. Undeterred, I found a workaround I would like to share with you.
What's It Going to Take?
In this example, we are going to build a simple metal picture frame with glass and backing. The driving geometry behind our design intent is the sheet metal frame, so that's where we will start. Using the default template Sheet Metal.ipt, create a new sheet metal part and build it using the typical sheet metal tools.
After we draw the sketch to represent the glass, you will notice the New Solid option in the extrude dialog box is grayed out when you try to extrude it. So you would think that our story ends here, but if you will click Convert to Standard Part under the Environment tab, you will notice that it was the sheet metal environment that disables the multi-body functionality; returning to the standard part environment gets us back to where we want to be.
Now we are ready to model the glass and backing of our picture frame. First, create the sketch for the glass on the back of sheet metal frame and extrude it to the desired thickness, selecting the New Solid option. Repeat these steps to create the backing that will hold the glass in place.
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