Inventor Nesting Push: Shape Extraction

00:13

Hi, my name is Bob Van der Donck.

00:15

I'm the UX designer for Inventor Nesting utility.

00:19

In this video, I will demonstrate the push workflow where we bring in an existing assembly into the nesting process.

00:29

I will be using this hopper assembly here.

00:32

And to give you an idea of what composition it has, it has a mix of file types.

00:40

There are sheet metal files in there, there are regular part files in there.

00:44

Some of the parts have a quantity of two, if I can locate them.

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So this handle here is being replicated on the left side as well.

00:55

So it has a quantity of two.

00:57

There is also a subassembly present with parts in steel mile.

01:04

So good ingredients, I think, to get an interesting nest and I will demonstrate that nesting utility can recognize these files automatically.

01:16

So I used the Create Nest context menu from the root node,

01:23

because we didn't add any specific icon in the Inventor ribbon to do so, so keep that in mind.

01:31

You can pick any template file to start from or you can add the New Nest to existing Nest documents.

01:41

Here, I'm just creating a Nest from scratch with default template.

01:47

This starts a new inest document and automatically starts the sources dialogue.

01:53

There's a little dialogue coming up here on top that really asks permission,

01:59

to create the automatically generated materials and corresponding thicknesses into the material library in this nest document.

02:09

And you typically say "yes" to this dialogue of course.

02:13

What then happens is that we extract the 2D shapes from the 3D parts.

02:18

I need to draw the attention to the source provider column here, for a second.

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Most of the parts are recognized as sheet metal files.

02:28

So we look at the flat pattern.

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There are also Inventor part provider parts in there.

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That means that we only look at sketches and extrusions for the generic CAD file, we look at the entire body.

02:41

So different rules of extracting the shape depending on the provider that you pick here.

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And you could change the provider in this column if you would want to for certain parts.

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So the extraction process finished successfully because the error log didn't give me any error.

03:07

Before I go out of the dialogue, I just want to draw your attention to something else.

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The dialogue might be daunting, especially with tables in it because we show by default, a lot of columns.

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So if you don't want to see the parent column, because that column really doesn't add value with a single assembly,

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and you don't want to see the unit rule, you could perfectly do so,

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and you could rearrange those columns, and then save this as your setting.

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And at any time, you can go back to the default display, or you can apply your personal settings.

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And this can be done in all the dialogues.

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So enough said about this dialogue, I just hit OK, which generates the extracted shapes on screen.

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Note also that we have a parent note here with the extracted shape underneath.

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Every specific shape has a distinct color.

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As you can see, we built those files in rows or in a matrix structure and each row represents a single material.

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So why do I know that?

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Well, a better way of looking at it is to use the Material Display mode.

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At this point, we show each material with its own different color.

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One other thing I want to draw your attention on.

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So all those materials that we generated for you, they are placed in what we call the process material library.

05:00

So you can see here you can go in each and every material, look at what the name and thickness is,

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and each material will have a thickness in this case, will have a packaging, I mean, and with the length and width of 20 inch by 20 inch.

05:24

You can hop through these materials and packaging in this way.

05:29

There is also another way of looking at the data.

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That is particularly interesting if you want to do multi edits on multiple materials or multiple packaging.

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So, for instance, if I want to set, if I want to allow rotation on all the materials,

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I can shift-select multi cells in a single column and go to multi edit,

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and say, yeah, allow rotation of the parts in the nesting process over 90 degrees.

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I do the same for the other rotational degrees of freedom here.

06:07

OK. So an interesting way of editing multiple materials in one go.

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The other point I want to make is that if you add a packaging,

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like for instance, I set certain values,

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let's say my default packaging I change from 250 by 100 inch in length and width.

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If I...

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once I've entered values, those values are remembered in nesting utility.

06:46

So whatever you do, the next time I generate a material, I would use a length and a width of 150 and 100.

06:60

It's a difficult concept to understand.

07:03

So you see here every new packaging, we'll use the previously used values.

07:13

So we don't use default values throughout the system, we just remember the last used values.

07:20

Very important point, I think.

07:22

So just to give you an idea of what was automatically created.

07:33

One of the other things I want to show you is the nesting properties.

07:37

So that is sort of the the result of what we brought in.

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And you can see here that the handle was brought in with a quantity of two.

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And you also get an overview of which materials, and which thickness we use.

07:52

This all looks good with the rotational degrees set here.

07:57

So all good and well.