From the course: Autodesk Inventor: Configurable Designs and Automation

Creating iAssemblies - Inventor Tutorial

From the course: Autodesk Inventor: Configurable Designs and Automation

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Creating iAssemblies

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- [Instructor] In this video we're going to learn about iAssemblies by creating a fairly simple one. We're going to create one in the context of the step assembly and this really is just comprised of two simple parts. We have the frame of the step itself and we have the pad that sits on top or the tread. Now in an iAssembly, we can basically create multiple variations of this step and we can tell Inventor which version of each we want for each member. Let's go ahead and go to our manage tab. From the manage tab we have the create iAssembly command. When we click that, it's going to bring up a table that is very similar to what it was when we did the iParts. The one key difference here is that we do have the components tab where it lets us control certain types of information about each of our components. You can see here we have the frame step and notice that over here we have a little grid on our icon. This means that this is an iPart and there are multiple versions of that step that we can choose from. What we want to do is we want to go ahead and include our table replace and this basically lets us tell the iAssembly which version of that that we want to include and then we're going to do the same thing for our tread. Just double click that and it will appear right here inside of our table. I'm gonna pull our table up here so that we can see it a little bit better. We're going to use a naming convention, so it's easy for us to know which step we're looking at. Our first one is going to be 18-10-50 and that's because we have an 18 inch base on our ladder frame. This is a 10 inch high step and it's a five degree angle on our front frame. Now we're going to go ahead and hit enter and it's going to tell us that it's going to change the member name and that's okay. We'll go and accept that. Then what we want to do know, is tell it which step we want. We want the 18-10-50 here. Then on the tread we want the 100 version, which is our medium tread length. We're going to select the 18-10-50. Now I actually might want to come in here on my member and type dash 100. I use the 100 to signify one inch for the tread length, 075 for 3/4 inch length, and 150 for 1 1/2 inch tread length. It might be good for us to track that in our part number as well. Let's go ahead, we're going to create multiple versions now and we're just going to create our next one, which is our 18 inch step, 50/100th. Again, it's just as simple as saying the frame we want is our 18 inch high frame along with that specific tread. Then we're going to go ahead and we're going to create about nine of these. So we want our 16-08. I find it easier sometimes just to go ahead and create all of the member names first and then we can go through and we can quickly pick the members that we want from each of these. We're gonna go through and we're gonna create these really fast and make sure that we capture all of the different step assemblies that we're looking for. Now once we have the steps created or the names done, then the next step is we want to come in and we want to make sure that we pick all of the right step frames. Here we can just go right down the line and make sure that we select the right one. Go ahead and make sure that you select the 24 inch ones. That's why I like to name these appropriately, because then I can spot check and I can make sure that I have picked the right versions for each of these step assemblies that I am creating. We're just going to go ahead and do the same thing for our treads, now and be sure that you pick from the 100 version. If you want you can feel free to experiment a little bit and try some of the other tread sizes. Just make sure that the step size matches, then it will come up the right length. Once we have all of these selected, then our table is now complete and I can go ahead and I can select okay. Now it's going to go ahead and create the table that has all nine of those different variations and notice that once it creates it I can expand this table and I can double click on any these and both the frame and the tread are going to update at the same time. So we basically just created a library of a bunch of different sizes that we'll need as we configure and create our top level assemblies.

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