Creating and defining a simple iPart - Inventor Tutorial

- [Instructor] In this video, we're going to take a look at how we can create iParts inside of Inventor. Now, the first part that we're going to work on today, is the frame step of our assembly. But before we do that, it's important to understand some of the key relationships that we have, that are built into our step ladder model. Now, notice that we have the Front Frame Angle, which represents the taper that we put into our handle or our step ladder. We have the Platform Height right here, we have the Stair Height, we have the Ladder Base Width and we have the Front Frame Height right here. Now, the way that this is set up is, inside of my stair parts, I have equations set up, so that if you give it the Ladder Base Width, the Stair Height, then it will automatically know how long the stair needs to be. Now we're going to be creating three different configurations as part of the exercises. The first step ladder is a 46 inch high, 30 inch platform, two steps 18 inch base with the step heights at 10 inches and 18 inches. We have a second one that's a little taller, the platform's going to be at 32 inches, with a 16 inch base and that's because the taper is smaller at 3.8 degrees instead of five. It will have three steps at eight, 16 and 24 inches each, and then finally we will have a third configuration which is a taller ladder at 64 inches, 45 inches platform height, and all of the other dimensions that you see here on the screen. Now what we wanna do, is we wanna start with this step frame part right here and we're going to make the nine different sizes that it will need for all nine stairs that are required for these three step ladders. So let's go ahead and go over to Inventor, and you can see this is the step frame part, and in order to make an iPart, again we're going to go to our Manage tab, and in the Author panel, we have the ability to create an iPart. Now when we do that, it brings up an iPart Author window and it shows us all the different types of information that we can build into our iPart. Now I also wanna point out that, any of the parameters that we've renamed inside of Inventor, it is going to bring those up automatically, now some of these we don't need to change, so we can just right click 'em and delete those columns. But we do need these three, we don't need this, we don't need any of these others. So we can just highlight that and delete those out. Now, another thing we want to include as part of our iPart table is we want to be able to give a description for each of the parts. So if we double click Description, then notice that it will bring that up right here for us. Finally let's go ahead and let's start creating an additional Member, now I'm going to expand this Member column, and this is a very important column right here, because if you notice, it has the little disc icon at the top? These are going to be the actual Member file names that are created so right now we're working at our factory which is basically our part that defines all of the table and all of the individual Members. But, our factory is going to create a separate IPT file for each of these variations or configurations that we create. So we want a standard naming convention that makes this easy for us to quickly look at a number, and get some information about that Member. So in this case our code is going to be to put the ladder base length, followed by a dash, the step height which in this case is 10 inches, and then another dash and then the angle. In this case we're gonna put 50, that stands for 5.0. So now we're done with that, when I click Enter, it's going to warn me that it's going to alter the file name of the Member, that's okay, so go ahead and click OK. Now for the second step, we want this to also be 18 inch base but this one is going to be our second step for our 18 inch wide configuration of our ladder. So we're going to make that an 18 inch step, and we will go head and we'll change that right there, and then we also want to update our descriptions so that they are accurate. The first one's actually going to be 10 inches high, and then our second one right here is going to be 18 inches high. So you can see how for each new member that we create, we had the ability with iParts to go in and update what we want those values to be. Now I'm just gonna go ahead and click OK, and for right now we're only creating two variations even though we need nine, and what I wanna show, first of all, notice that we can double click on either of these and you can see the length of our part update as we go from one Member to another. But I wanna right click, and we're going to say Edit via a Spreadsheet Inside of Excel, now it will let you know that any changes we make in the Spreadsheet will take effect after the Excel Sheet is saved and closed, and the first thing I like to do is highlight all of my columns across the top and double click this so I can actually see the information that is inside. Now here we could go in one by one, and I could start saying you know, Frame Step and the next one is going to be a 16 inch base. Our first step is gonna be eight inches high and it's gonna be a 3.8 inch Front Frame angle, and I could go in and I could start filling these in. But to make it faster, I have included in the exercises an Excel Spreadsheet that has all of that information for us. And it's called the Family Table Values, and if you go to the Frame Step option, go ahead and select after the first two, now the important thing is you wanna make sure that all of the columns in your Spreadsheet match the columns in this Spreadsheet. If they don't then you need to rearrange it so that it does, and that way you'll be able to copy all of this information, then go back to our current Spreadsheet and paste it. And now you can see that I have quickly created all of the remaining seven instances that we need, along with their description, their heights, Front Frame Angle, Ladder Base Length, and so forth. So now we can go head and save that Spreadsheet and close it and once we do that and we go back to Inventor, notice that it automatically creates all of our remaining Step Frames for us. So now I could click on any of these, and I can quickly see what all of my different steps look like, and that is how inside of Inventor we're able to create iPart Tables and make varying Members.