save as part, external faces only

[SolidCreative]

solidworks has the feature to save an assembly as a part, external faces only. This reduces model size dramaticly. Is there any way to do this with inventor, or even mechanical desktop? I've heard of the shrink wrap feature they have, but it seems way more difficult, as you have to cap all open ends. That is a little difficult when trying to cap every end of a entire assembly plant model.


thanks
Matthew

 

[mcgyvr]

No not really the new labs shrinkwrap feature is as close as you can get without going to great lengths with derived parts,etc..

I do agree that this shrinkwrap functionality that Autodesk has been showing on the labs site is really a tough tool to use. Seems we asked for shrinkwrap functionality that was easy to use like ProE/Solidworks and Autodesk's motto is 200 mouse clicks is always better than 1 so you can see where that went.

I have never used solidworks. Is their shrink wrap functionality as easy as picking the assembly model and saving as the shrinkwrap model. To me it just seems that Inventors shrinkwrap addin was done with the least amount of coding and this requires users to do so much more work than other cad packages.

 

[SolidCreative]

Yes, its very easy. "save as part" "external faces only"

And thats it!

 

[mcgyvr]

That is a great/easy feature in solidworks.

Sometimes I think autodesks motto is
"2 mouse clicks is always better than 1"

 

[aardvarkdw]

Mcgyvr,

It could be much worse, you could be using CATIA like I am. In that case I think Dassault's motto was if one mouse click/icon is good lets make 10 and give them unintuitive names....

David

 

[automationbabe]

I ran across this link this morning and thought I'd pass the information along. I'm on R11 and it works well. The help menu gives a little more detail.

http://www.inventorconnections.com/connectqna_submitanswer.php?cpfeatureid=31155

Love this site...just wish the Autodesk users were as active as the SolidWorks ones.

 

[mcgyvr]

I always go straight to the source for any Inventor questions.

http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=78

Lots of users with amazing amounts of knowledge. Plus many of the developers of the software post/respond to questions.