From the course: Autodesk Inventor: Configurable Designs and Automation

Creating a simple iMate - Inventor Tutorial

From the course: Autodesk Inventor: Configurable Designs and Automation

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Creating a simple iMate

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- [Instructor] In this video we're going to introduce how to create iMates inside of Inventor. We're going to do this by taking a simple rivet and creating an insert iMate and then creating the corresponding iMate in the actual frame step part, and then we'll go into an assembly, and we'll see how we can actually take those iMates and put them together. So first inside of our rivet part, we want this edge right here to insert into a corresponding hole in our frame step part. So what we're going to do is again we're gonna go to the Manage tab, and in the Author, we have a button that allows us to start the Create iMate command, or we can right-click anywhere inside of our graphics window, and on the context menu, we can come down to Create iMate. Now if you've ever put together an assembly inside of Inventor, this dialog box will look very familiar to you because it's very similar to how we create constraints inside of assemblies. So here all we need to do is click on the insert mate, then I want to expand my dialog box by clicking on this button, and that's going to allow us to create a name. So we're going to call this Rivet Insert, and notice that it's okay in this spot if we put spaces in our names, that's fine. Then I'm gonna click the edge that I want to insert, and click OK. Just like that, I've created the iMate, and if I go into my model browser and expand my iMates folder, you can see that we now have this new Rivet Insert iMate that we just created. An iMate by itself isn't very useful unless we have a corresponding iMate in another part. So here in our step frame, we want to go in and also create some insert constraints, or iMates, that will then be used in our next assembly. So let's right-click, let's bring up our iMate creation tool once again, and this time we're actually going to create four different insert constraints because we have four holes that we want to put the rivets into. So I'm gonna go ahead and call this Rivet Insert 1, and again we're going to activate the insert icon right here, and if you want to zoom in, make sure you select that outside edge right here on the part. Click Apply, then our next one we're going to call Rivet Insert 2, and we're going to pan over to our next hole, and go ahead and click on that, and click Apply. Then we're going to have Rivet Insert 3, and on this one, this is for the rivets that go on the back side of our step, so pick that hole that's on the far side right there, and click Apply, and then we wanna create one more for our Rivet Insert 4, and to get there, we have to go all the way to the back side of the model and zoom in right there. Then when we click OK, we're done with the command, click on the home button, and now you can see that we have all of the iMates set up and that's indicated by these little glyphs that you see on the screen. In addition, if I expand the iMates folder, again you can see that we have all four of the rivet insert iMates created. So now let's go into the step assembly, and let's go ahead and place the rivet inside of our assembly. So right here, if you scroll down to near the bottom, you'll see our rivet part that we have, and notice right here we have some iMate buttons. And you wanna make sure that you click this one down so that it will allow us to use iMates as we place our component. So now click Open, and you'll notice that it automatically finds a match for us, and it asks us, is this where you want to place the rivet? Now if I want, I can click my right-mouse button, and I can say, show me the next available mate. And it will move through all of the available mates. And just like that, I can also go to the previous ones and so I can start navigating and traversing through all of the iMates I have defined that are potential matches. Now if I want my rivet to come up right here, I can just click on it, and notice that now it has placed the rivet. It also then goes to the next one and says basically, hey, do you want to place one here? So I could go around, and I could place it, on all of the four locations that we created, or I could just right-click and say, Place at all matching iMates, and now with just a click of a button, we've been able to quickly place all of the rivets inside of our assembly.

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