Eric's Take...

...on Inventor's Task Scheduler.

With the next release of Inventor imminent, the migration of files to the next release is likely not a task any of us are looking forward to. If you are not already using it, you may want to consider the Task Scheduler. Going from the Start button, it can be found under the Tools sub-menu of your Inventor program menu.

There are almost a dozen different tools that Task Scheduler provides to run unattended tasks. To get started, pick one from the Create Task pull-down. When picking Migrate Files (or any of the other tasks), identify the files, folders, or Project to Migrate, fill out the Task Properties below, and the task is scheduled to run (Immediately or at a later time that is more convenient). Using Task Scheduler with files in a Vault Project will require Vault Authentication from the Files pull-down prior to running successfully. Please review the Help files for further clarification of specific task capabilities.

Additionally, provided below is a link to the Search Results for Articles on Autodesk's website related to the Task Scheduler.

Check them out at: Task Scheduler Results

Hope this helps.

Eric

Eric's Take...

...on a HUGELY revitalized Colorado Inventor Users Blog.

For those of you who have been wondering what has been up with this since May, I've been slacking, honestly. I just wasn't making the effort to post information that we all would find useful. That being said, I have made a New Year's Resolution to keep it much better updated than I have in the past. Let's hope it last much longer than most Resolutions!

Now to some of the changes. Blogger updated the capabilities of the Blog engine, so you will notice a little different look. We now have Labels, which will take you to the specfic topic you are seaching for information on. We also have a slightly different Archive listing, as well. The Disclaimer has been moved to the very bottom for everyone to see?!? Finally, Blogger has integrated it's login with Google accounts. If you already have a Google account, you can link your login to this with it and simplify the process. If you don't have a Google account, or would like to keep this one separate from your personal one, we can invite you to join through Gmail. You can email us at COInvUsers@gmail.com or you can pick on the Request Invitation Label at the top of the Sidebar on the left.

If you dig into the Labels area a bit, you can see I added a lot of content I should have been adding all along and I did some filing. I broke everything up into the most logical catagories I could come up with; so we now have: Eric's Take, News You Can Use, Service Packs, & Users Group Meetings. More can be added if needed, based on YOUR feedback.

One of the bigger reasons this fell to the wayside, was I felt like I was the only one out here... and I still do. I am not doing this for me guys, I know I like to talk and all, but I am doing this for you. If you have a comment on something I posted; or an issue you haven't been able to resolve on your own; or a solution you were able to come up with that you think others would benefit from...
Post It!

I have protected the blog from random blog spammers, so you have to be invited to be linked to this blog, but after that you have free-rein to speak your mind and I expect you to. Some of you may have forgotten how to logon to post, if so, let me know and we will set you back up.

Here's to a great 2007!

Let's hear it, folks! Comments are welcome.

Eric's Take...

...on Inventor 10's "global" Bill of Material functionality.

For those of you who have long agonized over the limited capabilities and controls in Inventor assembly's Bill of Material and its lackluster relationships with presentations and drawing Parts Lists, Inventor 10 goes a long way toward fixing your issues.

We are all aware that the BOM in the assembly drives the Item Number that is displayed on the drawing when Ballooning components in a view of an assembly or a presentation. We also know that we can adjust the order (and thus the Item Number) by reordering the parts in the browser, but if we do that after creating a presentation or placing a parts list, we do not see those changes reflected in those views. This causes us to have to spend an unacceptable amount of time editing the parts list to override what the assembly is dicating to display the components with the Item Numbers we need them to show.

The Bill of Material in Inventor 10 addresses those issues and more, eliminating a significant amount of the workarounds we have come up with to control the assembly BOM and how it is displayed. To start with, we can choose which Properties, including Custom Properties, we want to display in the dialog and they stay there. We can then edit those Properties and have those changes pushed into the individual files, eliminating the need to use the Design Assistant or iProperties. We can even override Quantity to add spares or occurances we haven't modeled.

With the addition of the BOM Structure property, we can now correctly reflect how a component fits into the assembly, such as Normal (fabricated), Inseparable, Purchased, Phantom, or Reference. We can add components that have not or cannot be modeled, such as paint or lubricants, with Virtual Components.

Once our BOM is correctly represented in the assembly, we can Sort the BOM by any of the Properties discussed above. After sorting, we can Renumber the BOM to update those components with properly ordered numbering. For example, if we sort on BOM Structure, we can number all Normal components first and all Purchased components after.

Additionally, we can display both the Model and BOM structures in the same dialog. We can enable Parts Only mode to view the assembly without any of the Assembly Heirarchy. On the Export side, we can take the Structured or Parts Only assembly heirarchy out to a variety of data formats, including Excel and Access.

And with all these changes, the presentations will update based on changes made to the assembly BOM and the Parts List are more easily updated, while retaining their ability to display the BOM information as circumstances dictate.

Let's hear it, folks! Comments are welcome.

Eric's Take...

...on Autodesk Vault 4.0 and beyond.

We all know that Vault ships with all Autodesk Mechanical products (Inventor, Inventor Pro, AutoCAD/M and AutoCAD/E), but how many of you are using it?

Why should I, you ask?

Prior to Vault 3, I would have agreed. There wasn't much of an incentive to move to Vault. Those of you that did were brave and definitely were riding the bleeding edge of technology. Congratulations if you have stuck with it and have migrated through the releases. If you didn't, it is time to revisit Vault.

Vault 3 was enough of an advancement that it was usable by those who were willing to get it in place and rolling.

Vault 4 (the latest shipping version with the above-mentioned products) has advanced enough that you need to convince me you can't benefit from using it. With the inclusion of Copy Design, it sounds a death knell to my beloved friend the Design Assistant (it always worked for me!). While not perfect, but fixed in Vault 4.5 (ProductStream 4.5) and should ship with Vault '5', the ability to reuse an existing design and all its documentation for a new design without having those troublesome links back to the original should be reason enough.

If not, the superior Search capabilities just by having the data in a relational database instead of Windows Explorer has got to sell you. How about the ability to Rename to your hearts content with everything being notified automatically? Or the ability to Filter, Create Shortcuts, Save Searches, Create Labels, Auto-Publish .DWFs, & Show Custom Properties and Thumbnails.

Oh... did I mention you also get a history of everything done to your designs through the Check-Out / Check-In process. Hmm, it's there too.

Let's hear it, folks! Comments are welcome.