Sheet Metal Parts - Aligning Holes

[sdalcorn]

Hi there,

I am fairly new to this site, so I appologise if my question has been posted before or is not appropriate in any way.

I did some extensive Mechanical Design in 2D last year, and was quite annoyed when Autodesk invited me to a seminar which featured AutoDesk Inventor. I was incredibly impressed, but all I could think about was all the time I *could* have saved!

Ah well, no use crying over spilt milk, so I decided to buy the product right there and then. I had looked into Solid Modeling before, but frankly it was a little out of my budget, could not justify it at the time, and did not want to (did not have the time to) learn another product.

I have a friend who is on holidays for most of January and he has allowed me to use his AutoCAD Inventor Station (v5.0, I think it is), while he is away. I spent a full day on it yesterday, and got a complete product designed in Sheet Metal.

I made an assemby of all the parts, and all I need to do is to add holes for rivets to assemble them. I am *sure* I have watched him do this in the assembly view - ie; add a hole that penetrates 2 (or more) parts and is "adaptive"(?) - that is, if you move the holes on one part, the corresponding holes will move on the other parts.

My friend's CNC shop will actually fabricate these parts for me, so I guess I could simply wait until they get back on deck, but I would love to know how to do it for myself.

Also, if I buy v6.0 will I be able to send files to my friend before he upgrades?

Thank you in advance,

Sean

 

[sstrik]

Sean,

Inventor is not backwards compatible. The only wa to transfer files from a new version to an old version is through IGES, SETP or SAT. They then just become dumb solids

To place holes and match them together, just create the holes in the grounded component in the assembly (you can edit the part by double clicking on it). The grounded part is usually the first part placed in the assembly.

Then return back to the assembly and double click on the part that required mating holes. Place the hole sketch in roughly the right position and only dimension the diameter, do not allow the centre point to be constrained in any way.

Extrude the holes and then select the extrusion in the browser window and make the extrusion adaptive. Return to the assembly and make that part adaptive. Mate the axis of the holes in the grounded part to the adaptive part and the holes should align.

Hope this helps.

Regards


Steve