Animating Inventor Parameters

You may not know this, but a lot of my blog post ideas come from trying to find answers to customer questions.  Occasionally, the answer to the question is a pretty cool workflow or technique.  That is the case with this post.

Yesterday, a customer emailed me after viewing my Inventor Studio webinar.  She was working, in Inventor Studio, on an animation that showed a tool crimping two panels together.  Her idea was to have the pre and post crimped panels overlaying each other and have the one fade out, as the other one faded in.  Looking at her video it looked good, except for Inventor rendered a shadow, or something else, where the deformation occurs.  The customer wanted to know if I had any ideas on how to eliminate those shadows.

I don't typically use the component fade animation in Inventor, but I do remember a former co-worker saying that they never work right for him.  So that got me thinking about which other types of animations Inventor Studio is capable of, that might be able to accomplish this.  Obviously, the Component, Constraint, and Positional Representations were not possible because the change we needed to see was contained in one part file.  That really left me with the Parameter animation.  I knew that I could drive a flange angle with a parameter, I just wasn't sure if Inventor would allow me to animate that parameter and how smoothly the animation would play.  So I told the customer that I needed to test out an idea before I sent her in that direction.

The parts that get crimped looked like sheet metal Contour Flanges.  So I made a test part.  Then I created a cut where the the crimped sections would be.  The next step was to add Flange features in the cutouts.  I made sure to give the Flange Angle parameter a meaningful name, so I could work with it later in the animation.  Also,  I had to tweak the settings so that the new flange matched the original shape of the model.  While I was creating the flanges, I made the Bend Reliefs wide enough for me to add a Loft later to fill the gaps.  I was also a little worried about how the Lofts would animate, but I figured that I would cross that bridge when I came to it.

Before I went to the trouble to make the Lofts, to fill the gaps, I wanted to make sure the flanges would animate smoothly.  So I saved my part, placed it in a new assembly, and entered Inventor Studio.  

There are two things that you have to do to a parameter to be able to animate it in Inventor Studio.  First, it has to have Export enabled.  That just tells Inventor that it is allowed to use that parameter in operations like Derive. 

The second step is to make sure that you have picked the parameter as a Parameter Favorite.  Using the Parameter Favorites command, Inventor opens a dialog where you navigate a tree structure of your model and pick out parameters that you want to add as favorites.  

The rest of the process was easy.  I just had to use the Parameters animation command to pick the Parameter Favorite to animate, the start and end values, and the location in the timeline.  The software takes care of the rest.

In this case, the parameter animation was working great.  I just had to go back and add lofts to get the flanges to blend in with the rest of the part.  After I added the Lofts, I did discover that when the flange got close to the end of its movement, the automatic mapping on the lofts would change.  I had to turn off the Automatic Mapping on the the Lofts.

After all of that, I had a pretty good looking animation.  I will be the first to say that the Lofts are not 100% realistic to how the part would work when crimped.  However, for the animation in question, it is very unlikely anyone would notice, especially because of the viewing angle in the animation.

Here is a quick sample of the finished product.  

Introduction to Visualization in Inventor

I know it has been awhile since I have posted to this blog.  Summer has been a busy time and I have been working on many topics.  However, none of them are ready for a blog post.  I am sure they will show up here soon.  In the meantime, I presented a webinar yesterday on how to use Inventor Studio to create still and animated renderings.  It is just an introduction, but should be enough to help you get started. 

Creating 3D Models From 2D Floor Plans: Part 3

In previous posts, I started to outline a workflow that eased the process of taking an existing AutoCAD floor plan to a 3D model, the workflow was also using 3D scans as an error check.  The final installment is where all the work pays off and we can validate our model with the 3D scan data.

In the last post, I had connected the Revit and ReCap models, with the help of Navisworks.  Using the Real View function in ReCap, we are able to see both models as an overlay.  We are then able to take measurements from the model to determine corrections that should be made.  It is important to understand, that we could potentially take real life measurements too.  

Once we know what corrections or additions need to be made, you return to the CAD models, in their native applications and use standard editing and modeling techniques to make the corrections.  In the case of AutoCAD and Revit, you have to decide if you want to maintain the Revit model, AutoCAD floor plan, or both.  Personally, I would maintain the Revit model and designate the AutoCAD floor plan as an obsolete file.

Once the CAD models are changed, it will be important to incorporate those changes in the Navisworks model, especially if you want to see them in the combined ReCap and Revit view, in ReCap.  The trick here is that the NDW file, that is attached to the ReCap point cloud, will not live update and will need to be re-exported.  So the proper workflow is to open the Navisworks NWF file, which does maintain a live link to the CAD models represented.  I recommend using Save As to create the NWD file and overwrite the previously created NWD file.  The reason for this, is that we can reload, or refresh, the attached Navisworks project in ReCap.  If you generate a new NWD, you will have to delete the attached model and attach the new one.

If you find that you have a significant amount of changes to make to your Revit model, it might be easier to insert the ReCap model into the Revit model in Revit.  There are tools that will allow you to snap to the point cloud when moving and inserting objects.

Here is a YouTube video that demonstrates this portion of the workflow.

Who Can Use Factory Design Utilites? (Hint: Probably You!)

In March, I hosted MESA Inc's webinar entitled "Who Can Use Factory Design Utilites?  (Hint: Probably You).  In the webinar, I demonstrate how the Factory Design Utilities workflow can be applied to non-factory facilities.  There are plenty of ways these tools can be applied to factory and non-factory facilities.  If you want to see how these tools work, you can watch a recording of the webinar here.

Creating 3D Models From 2D Floor Plans: Part 2

In my last post, I began a series of posts that was going to create a 3D model from a 2D floor plan.  The floor plan is also going to be compared to a 3D scan to verify the accuracy of the 2D floor plan.

The first portion of the workflow was to take the facility scans into ReCap to create a 3D Point Cloud.  Now that we have done that, we are ready for Phase 2, which is building the Revit model on the 2D floor plan.  One key element to the whole workflow is making sure that the Point Cloud and 3D model have a common origin.  We set the origin in the ReCap model, so we just need to make sure that we have the same point as the origin of the AutoCAD file.  The origin of the AutoCAD model will be connected to the origin of the Revit model.  The standard AutoCAD move command can be used to move the entire floor plan to the origin, if it is not already in the correct location.

Now we are ready for Revit, so we can create a new Revit model, from an Architectural template.  The AutoCAD file can be inserted as a linked CAD file.  Then the AutoCAD file can be used to snap to as walls, door, etc are added to the model.

The following video shows how to move the desired AutoCAD point to the origin, insert it into a Revit model, and create the building architecture from standard Revit workflows.




Once the Revit model is done, the next step it to connect the Revit Model to the ReCap model.  There are two ways to do this.  One is to insert the ReCap model into the Revit model.  However, there is a ReCap Beta function that I want to show off in this workflow, so I am going to focus on the second method.  The beta function that I want to show allows the user to overlay a Navisworks project over the scan image in a 3D view.  Again,  this requires a Navisworks file, so my next step will be to append the Revit model to a Navisworks model.

There is not much to appending a Revit model to a Navisworks file.  It really is just a matter of clicking the Append command and picking  the Navisworks file.  Navisworks will insert the model origin to origin, thus the earlier importance of getting the AutoCAD file's origin to the right place.  There is one tricky point to the Navisworks portion of the workflow.  ReCap wants an NWD file, not the typical NWF file.  The NWF file mostly references other files, the NWD will contain all the model geometry, which ends up being easier for ReCap to overlay.  One downside to the NWD file is that it will not update dynamically.  So as the Navisworks model changes, you will need to export another NWD file.  Creating the NWD file is pretty simple, it is just a matter of performing a Save As of the Navisworks model.

Once you have the NWD file, it is time to attach the file to the ReCap project.  The attachment of the NWD file is done through a command from the menu in the bottom right corner of the interface.  All you have to do is click on the Attached Project command and pick an NWD.  It can be confusing at times because you really will not see the project change after the file is attached.  That is because the overlay occurs only in the RealView, which allows the user to look at the actual scan image.  However, if the project attached successfully and you enter a RealView, from one of the scan locations, you will see the Navisworks project overlayed with the scanned image.

Here is a video that demonstrates the workflow of taking the model from Revit to Navisworks to ReCap.


The benefit to this is that it should be easier to visually compare the ReCap to the Revit model.  If any discrepancies are found, the user has a pretty good idea of what portions of the facility need to have some measurements taken.

In my next post, I will discuss how to correct some of the discrepancies between the 3D scan and 2D floor plan.

Creating 3D Models From 2D Floor Plans: Part 1

Recently, I was my opinion on the best way for a customer to build a 3D model of their facility.  They were considering getting the building scanned to aid in the process.  As much as I like working with scan data, I personally see some sort comings from modeling from scans.  When it was mentioned that the customer had a 2D AutoCAD floor plann of the facility, I was hit with a little inspiration.

Using a 2D floor plan as the basis of a 3D building model in AutoCAD Architecture or Revit is really easy.  Those softwares allow you to create walls, doors, windows, etc, while snapping to geometry from the 2D floor plan.

One of the problems with working from 2D floor plans of a building is that they are rarely up-to-date.  At my last job, we had a floor plan of the entire building, but no one ever maintained it.  That is unless a project arose that needed it.  Then it was a scramble to update the drawing by going and taking a ton of measurements.

This is where the 3D scan can come into play.  The 3D scan can be used to validate the model from the 2D floor plan.  Sure Revit and AutoCAD Architecture both have tools for inserting a ReCap point cloud, but ReCap has a function, currently in Beta, where you can attach a Navisworks model.  Once the Navisworks model is attached, it will overlay the Navisworks model when you are viewing the actual scan in RealView.  There is just one catch to this, the origins of the ReCap model and the Navisworks model need to align.  If not, you find it a lot harder to detect the differences between the two models.

The initial ReCap workflow is the same as pretty much every other ReCap project.

1. Create a Project
2. Import the Scans
3. Process the Scans, manually registering any scans that did not get merged into the project
4. Create regions as needed
5. Update the origin if needed

Here is a video that shows these steps for my sample project.

The next step will be to import the AutoCAD floor plan into Revit and create the walls and other architecture element.  These steps will come in my next blog post and video.

Introducing ReCap Photo

Last Fall, Autodesk released ReCap Photo.  It is only partially a new product and a companion product for ReCap and ReCap Pro.  I say it is partially a new product because the technology has been around for over a year before the release of ReCap Photo.  If you have been following Autodesk, ReCap, or reality capture, in general, you should have heard of or seen Project Memento.  Project Memento was focused on mesh files while ReCap's photogrammetry workflow was focused on point clouds.

I really like this "semi-new" product.  One of the biggest struggles for  the casual ReCap user was how to go from the point cloud to something solid.  Anyone using ReCap as part of a survey workflow, actually had tools inside of AutoCAD Civil 3D to turn point clouds into Civil 3D surfaces.  However, there seemed to be a lack of tools for other applications.  As I learn about ReCap Photo, I find that it is capable of functions that make my work easier.  For example, I just found a way to use ReCap Photo and Fusion 360 to turn an STL file into a solid model.

If you have used  the previous web-based Photo to 3D workflow, it is pretty similar.  ReCap still uses the cloud to process the photos and make a 3D model.  The biggest differences are that the project is created in a local application, and not a web site, and the output is now a mesh file instead of a point cloud.  At first, I was not sure if I would like the mesh output because I was pretty comfortable with the point cloud output.  I am growing to appreciate the mesh output and recognize that the mesh output is better suited for working toward a solid output.

I was a little nervous the first time I tried to run a ReCap Photo project because I was not able to set the scale of the model in the photos while uploading the photos.  I discovered that scaling of object based projects is now done after the model is made.  Which actually fits some advice Autodesk had for the previous workflow.  Autodesk said that ReCap works best if it is allowed to figure how the photos fit together without having to worry about scaling.  The old advice was to run projects once without control points, then run it again with them.  Now that does not need to be done.

To help you make the transition into using ReCap Photo I have made two videos.  The first video shows how to create an Object based project.

The second video shows some of ReCap Photo's tools for processing the mesh output.