Watch "Shaft, Gear, and Cam Generation in Autodesk Inventor"

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

Between jobs long ago, I wrote a few articles for a magazine for VARs (value-added resellers). The articles were all 800 words long, although their real length was one word: Training. To really give your clients (and the companies whose products you sell and support) value, provide top-shelf training. Today’s Check It Out, sponsored by EMA Design Automation, defines top-shelf training when it comes to a webinar. And you get to check it out without charge or registration.

Called “Shaft, Gear, and Cam Generation in Autodesk Inventor,” this rebroadcast focuses on the Power Transmission Design Accelerators in Autodesk Inventor. Inventor’s Design Accelerators are a collection of more than 30 tools to design, analyze, and create common mechanical components that go into equipment—cams, bolted connections, what have you. Design Accelerators leverage mechanical relationships—functional requirements—rather than geometric descriptions. This minimizes or even eliminates sketching, cross sectioning, resolving, and resolving to yourself to find an easier way to do the job. You select features, input your attributes, grip and adjust features, and add—or go back and add—more features as needed. There are built-in tools for calculations, graphing, reporting, and exporting.

The webinar, which runs just over 40 minutes, demonstrates Inventor’s accelerators at work through four main segments: shaft, gear, and cam generation then calculation tools. The shaft generator segment shows you how to create shafts in sections and add features. During the gear generator demonstration, you see how to design spur, worm, and bevel gears. You then see how Inventor helps you build disc and cylindrical cams, complete with some motion functions. The calculation tool finale runs through some strength and performance checks

I cannot claim great knowledge of using Inventor’s Design Accelerators for power transmission design. But, after watching this webinar, I came away impressed by how easy it seemed to learn and use the Design Accelerators to create complex 3D design elements. I was left with the impression that Inventor’s Design Accelerators, first introduced a couple of versions ago, are a high-productivity toolkit just now beginning to be tapped.

The presenter, Jerry Berns, is an application engineer at EMA Design Automation. He specializes in the Autodesk Digital Prototyping products for MCAD. Berns has a nice easy gait to his presentation. He (thankfully) avoids wandering off into what-if land, branching endlessly into if-then-else conditions, and pouring so much data into your senses that you lose the ability to understand what’s going on. Yet, this well-paced webinar is fully technical and in-depth.

  Whether you’re a newbie or an old hand with Autodesk Inventor’s Design Accelerators, you should find it easy to extract value from EMA Design Automation’s complimentary webinar. It’s very well done. Hit the link and check it out for yourself.

Thanks, Pal.” Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Check it Out: Watch “Shaft, Gear, and Cam Generation in Autodesk Inventor”