Part 3 of New Frame Generator Parts

New Content Center Family 

As we continue our discussion, we need a New Content Center Family. We need this in order to add a shape with the correct material from the Style Library.

There are a lot of discussions about the content center, and how to make a Read/Write Library. Later I will post one of my own, discussing the merits of a new one, however in the mean time simply understand that in order to make changes to the content, you need to create another library that is has Read/Write rights.   

Navigate to the Content Center Editor

TOOLS MENU->CONTENT CENTER EDITOR

Create a Custon Content Center Family

If you don’t have a Read/Write Library, then you need to create one. See this post for more information Read Write Library Creation

Select the Library View and change it to the desired Library Standard. In this example I will choose ANSI. Navigate to the Structural Shapes Category, and select the Square/Rectangle/Hex bars Sub Category. In the right hand pane, you should notice the 2 families, Rectangular and Square. In this example I chose square, but you might want to choose rectangle instead.

Right click and Copy to the Read/Write Library. 

Note: you could simply copy the category structure over and then create your own family from scratch, but the data fields in the family copy are really helpful. Some you will want to keep anyway. It’s kind of daunting to see all the empty columns, and have to wing it the first time.

 

Edit Family Properties

Once that is complete, switch your library view to the Read/Write Library. Navigate to the Square/Rectangle/Hex bars Sub Category. In the right hand pane, you should notice the Square Family copy.

Right click the family, and select Family Properties.

Here you will want to change the appropriate properties. I changed Name, Description, and Family Folder Name.  ….You have all those standards written down, right? Just stay with ANSI for right now.

Do you remember the last post? At the end the statement was made about the standard must be correct in the Materials Database. This too needs to be correct, or at least something you can remember.

 Click OK

Edit Family Table.

Right click on the Family, and select Family Table.

A dialog will appear showing the spreadsheet contents of the family, such as Sizes, evaluations, materials and descriptions.  Due to Inventor’s keen awareness of what you are doing, you may want to work in a certain order. My suggestion is to work in the following order:

Delete Rows, Edit Designation, Mass, Material, then Filename. The Filename often won’t update after other changes are made.

Let’s begin.  

Delete Rows

There are a lot of rows I don’t want. For this example, I am simply using a few key sizes (standard board sizes) from the ASLS size standard. Everything else I am deleting. Create a selection by selecting the upper row that will be erased, hold shift, and select the bottom row to be erased.

Note: remember to right click the ROW HEADER, otherwise you will be deleting fields, and the calculations will start balking and erroring with each field that is being removed.  No worries if you just did that, just enter through the disaster, and reselect the dead rows, and delete them properly.

Right click the selection ROW HEADER, and pick Delete Row.  

You should get the warning that states that the selected family members will be deleted and unavailable. Click Yes. You should see that those rows are gone. Conversely you can simply suppress the rows, but why. These odd sizes do not occur in the ASLS standards, and it would be quite difficult to procure these on a regular basis. (If you can get these, then leave them in.) Clean out all the remaining rows that you don’t want.  

Designation

Make sure you change the designations, or the Names, to consistent useful values. I will use the trade names here. Simply select the field and enter the changes.  

Mass

The mass properties are inaccurate. I started here with the density of the material. Inventor’s family uses 0.01 units to get the volume to calculate the mass with. Recalculate your mass for the appropriate volumes.

Note: I was not too sure at the time of this work through of the family members that would stay. There are a lot of stragglers ad odd sizes. I will finish deleting the odd rows later, and will repost the clips.

Notice that 6×6. It’s waaaaay out. Be very careful, as it is very easy to miss properties that need to be altered.  

There, that’s better (I cleaned up my list a bit too).  

I used a conversion on this site to rough in my mass property. There are better resources, but this was convenient for this tutorial.

http://www.allmeasures.com/formulae/static/materials/43/density.htm   

 http://www.allmeasures.com/formulae/static/materials/43/density.htm   

 

http://www.allmeasures.com/formulae/static/materials/43/density.htm   

Material

The material and pull downs are updated from the Default Inventor Style Library.  Select one of the fields and scroll to the name of the newly created material styles.   

 
 

It should be there. Edit each field that needs the new material.

File name

The filenames will change once the designation is introduced. Simply change the filename to whatever consistently fits your company needs. I used ASLS in the name because the designation and sizes are ASLS. The material is ANSI, and so the family lies in the ANSI designation. You can make the filename whatever you want.  

 

When you copy the rows, the File name copies with it. You cannot have identical Filenames in the family. Our discussion will not extend into Content management, however understand that you may want to add the material to the file name, and part number fields. I will briefly describe this so you can get moving.

Right click the column header and select Column Properties.

Follow suit with the other items in the query. At the end of the query, add the following & ” – ” &. Then select the list button to the right and double click the Material item from the list. That should add the material into the query.

Select OK

When you are satisfied, select the OK button. The notice will appear that the content was saved successfully. Hit OK and another dialog will appear asking if you want the refresh the content. Select YES, and the Content Center will refresh. Exit the Editor.

 
 

Insert the new Frame

Open the drawing and change the Assembly Panel to Frame Generator. Select Insert. After the Insert Dialog appears, Select the ANSI standard, and then scroll the Family to find the newly created Content Center shape. Select the Material Style list, and scroll to the Material Style previously created. There they are.

 
 

 
 

Now your frame’s mass properties and Material Styles will be correct, and default properly too.