Product Design Suite 2013 Workflows – MFG Master Class

by David Gate

Following on from my previous Inventor to Inventor Fusion Workflow I thought I would share with you the live demo I did at our recent MFG Masterclass.

The go kart data set we used didn’t have a nose cone. I thought that the square front end would slow this kart down. So I designed and modelled a nose cone up very quickly live to the attendees.

The video below shows some nice workflows.

I first create a simple DWG file in Inventor with just 2 views one. This DWG can then be opened in Sketchbook, a product that comes with almost every suite. Using Sketchbook to draw out a rough concept design on top of the existing go kart makes life easy, you get the size and shape you want, you can draw it free hand or use the line and spline tools like I did.  I created a rough shape of how I wanted the nose cone to look.

These lines can then be exported out again as a DWG and then imported into Inventor. Once scaled (as the drawing itself was scaled) and tidied up I created blocks of each view and then created a solid body from them. There is a nice tip hidden in the video where I create a surface and then extrude to the surface.

I then have a shape that roughly resembles the nose cone I want. To further improve the shape I pushed the model into Inventor Fusion to create abit more of a curvaceous shape and then go back to Inventor to add some final details.

It’s just a very quick example of what is available to you with the Product or Factory Design Suites but highlights a few things that you can do with the products you have.