When working in an assembly, one of the tricky things can be trying to pick a narrow edge when using the mate constraint. Murphy's Law grabs you by the lapels, then shakes vigorously like a bartender shaking a martini.
You can pick every edge, sketch line, and point, but never get the face you want. If you're on your forth cup of coffee, you probably can't even hold your hand still enough to use the "Select Other" tool.
So now what? You could zoom in to the part so closely you feel like your reenacting the "extreme closeup" scene from Wayne's World. But that can get a little irritating.
You could hold your breath, grab your mouse hand by the wrist, and stick your tongue out the corner of your mouth until you can steady yourself enough to make the pick. But that just looks silly.
Or you could learn this trick I picked up from somewhere in my past. I wish I could tell you who showed it too me, but that recollection has fallen to the fog of Autodesk Universities past.
What's the trick? Instead of using Mate, choose Flush first. Why? Flush sees ONLY faces. It doesn't pick edges, points, or sketches. Only faces. Once you have your faces selected, switch back to Mate.
It's like it's own filter!
Using Flush to filter faces. Try saying that 5 times fast!
Give it a try. It's pretty quick, simple, elegant, and a lot easier than you might think.
Plus, you don't have to cut back on your coffee intake!
Then in the last few weeks, I've been working with Autodesk Inventor Publisher, and talked about exporting video files from Inventor Publisher
Then one night, it occurred to me, and I had that moment that Gene Wilder spoke of so well.
Camtasia Studio for years. Inventor Publisher can export a video format. Why not combine the two?"
Using Techsmith's Camtasia Studio for editing my Autodesk Inventor Publisher video
So I did. Here's the result. It could definitely use some polish. But for a first try, it's not too bad (at least I think). I could probably add a few more bubbles, and tweak the narration a bit more.
Perhaps some of you out there in the "Cloud" can share some of your thoughts on how you might approach something similar?
In any case. Here's my video. Take a look, and let me know what you think!
I've got to put this weeks post off a day or so. I was fortunate enough to drive to Las Vegas for a good friends wedding, but not so lucky as to get back at a reasonable time.
Why? A see of taillights.
Why me?
The normally 4 hour drive ended up taking more like 7 hours.
So after getting home at midnight, I thought it best to save the post, and get to bed.
At long last, my next (and final, at least for now) video in my Autodesk Inventor Publisher series of videos! We're going to publish your Inventor Publisher data into "publicly" consumable format.
Those formats can be one of several. Microsoft Word documents, Adobe PDFs, Adobe Flash, Autodesk DWF formats, and even files for the Autodesk Inventor Publisher formats for iPhones, iPads, and Android mobile devices.
Example of an image Exported from Inventor Publisher
So the first thing we'll have to decide is what format is the best for the end user we want to supply. That will ultimately a decision based on the best format to send to the end user.
So far, we've seen how we can create the formats, adjust the timing of our instructions, as well as add annotations to the instructions.
In this video, we'll talk about exporting the instructions and finally get them distributed to the users who will be using them!
Another busy weekend has prevented me from putting together my next planned Inventor Publisher video. I promise to get one out as soon as I can.
I can at least see the light of day with my current projects, and I'm pretty sure it's not an oncoming train!
But on a "tangent blog", I thought I'd share an anecdote picked up from my volunteer work at Planes of Fame in Chino, Ca.
I recently began learning out to recover control surfaces in fabric. That's right. The old school cloth and fabric rudders, ailerons, and elevators.
My first assignment? Not a trip to the shop to get dirty. Start reading the manual. Get familiar with the process, so you know what we're doing, and why we do it.
After that, I finally after a couple of weeks, I got to start working on a real project. The rudder of a TBM Avenger.
The rudder of the Avenger looking from the bottom up.
The first thing I'm told before we start looking at it? "This is more art than science."
We begin working. Actually, they're doing more working, I'm doing more watching. But I'm learning the art of tugging, stretching, and; cutting the fabric to fit around the curved surfaces of the rudder.
As the project progresses, the team stands up and studies a compound curve. They discuss whether or not the material will shrink around a given bend when heated. If it should be cut instead, and if so, where it has to be cut, and how many cuts are required.
And if we cut the fabric, here, that's going to have an effect two steps down the line, so that has to be considered too.
It's an exercise in patience and planning.
So why would I put this in a blog? This is about CAD software, not about seventy year old warbirds.
I put it in here because the planning of the project is as important as the process, maybe even more important. Even the veterans of doing this have to check the manuals, stop and talk over a step in the process, and even step a way for a few minutes to pace around the hangar until inspiration comes. (These are referred to as "coffee breaks").
Starts sounding a bit like an implementation, or maybe an installation or software upgrade, doesn't it?
So that's where my observations are this week. A reaffirmation of all those times that I've wanted to charge ahead, get 'er done. All those times I've wanted to "make it happen" so we can get to happy hour and high five for a job well done.
The same rudder, a little bit closer now.
What did I learn from those guys stretching the fabric on a 70 year old Avenger's rudder? The experts know what they know, and they also know what they don't know.
Don't neglect your planning. And when you think the planning is done, self check yourself as you go forward. You never know when you may learn a better way to do things.
And on that note, here's the aircraft that rudder belongs to. This video was recorded when it flew at an event last year.
