Inventor – iFeatures provide a quick fix

This weekend I was up to my neck in a problem with having to rebuild a fast and dirty project.  It was built for pretty only.  The problem was that a weekend build did not cover enough time to do the job right. Shortcuts lead to failures in Inventor.

I had constrained latches of a door in the door assembly, and then reversed my build and snapped the cut edges off the latch in the door part, and cut out the hole.  It was fast and I didn’t need solid build, just fast.  Hmmm, sounds familiar.  Don’t have time to do it right, but always have time to do it over….  And do it over you will.

I started the job with a skeleton containing the global resources, and the overall shell.  This worked like  champ.  Eventually as I began to run out of time, I started to cut corners.  Portions of the projected geometry began to fail for one reason or another (because of the shortcuts).  Everything was fine until I had to make a change.

So was tired of recreating my ‘shortcut’ doors, and decided to get a better shortcut.  The latch plate had to recut for each change. 

Use the iFeature to reduce repetitive steps

Rather than create it for the third time (eventually even I learn from my mistakes), I created an iFeature.  This part however had no geometry and was just the solid model.  Fine.  I created a cut extrusion from sketched cut edges, an sent it out in all directions.

Civil 3D – Rotate/Translate selection of Points

In Land Desktop rotating a selection of points was a piece of cake.  Well….if you had Lisp code, and we had tons of it.  Since writing about solutions (and actually solving them) takes more time that writing code, my group doesn’t really have a great deal of new code turned out, and use mostly native AutoCAD/Civil commands and features.  I’d love to finish .NET’ing all my old LISP, but I just don’t have the time and money.  I tried to get dirt on fellow coders, but coercion and blackmail will not work on Christopher (he is a clean cu chap), so I guess I am stuck with work-arounds.

The situation in the image below is nothing new to anyone dealing with Point data coming in, especially when it is fill for an existing design.  The backsight is wrong.

If you don’t have a survey network loaded, then you may be scratching your head.  There are no tools to select a group of points and modify them using standard AutoCAD tools.  You can get a group, but you still can’t affect a group with the touchy feely interface that you understand.

Identify the group of points that are wrong, and make a Point Group, and position it at the top of the Group List.  Set both of it’s styles to be Standard.  Then take the ‘All Points’ Group, and send it just below the new Group.  Set it’s styles to be ‘<none>’ for both styles.  No big Mystery here, just filtering out the problem points.

Now the key is how you have organized your Object Layers.  Mine are all “PNT-*”.  So I go to the command line and lock all layers, and unlock the Point layers. “-la lo * unl pnt-*”

When I window the area, only the visible points will be selected.  All the rest of the entities are locked by layer.  Here a simple rotate by reference command gets me going.

We used to have a really nice tool written by Dexter Lundy, that selected LDD Points by Description, Point Range, and Elevation Range.  That will probably be the next tool I recode.  It wasn’t possible to get it in 2007 when I last investigated it, but I believe it would be a cinch to get working now…..hint hint.

Civil 3D – Trojan Cleanup

8/10/2009

Autodesk posted a writeup on the trojan we mentioned earlier.  There is a script and some search and destroy. 

Knowledge Base instructions

Civil 3D – 2010 Update 1

updated 8/82009

The Civil 3D 2010 Update 1 is available at the Autodesk service release site. 

I have updated and corrected the links for both Civil and Civil 3D, but the “…Autodesk product could not be located…” error is still there, no matter where the service pack was received from.  If anyone else is having the same problem, please post your issues here for the community.

Autodesk Civil Service Release site

Civil 2010 Update 1

Civil 3D 2010 Update 1

There is a wide array of fixes.  I noticed a lot of spiral geometry fixes, 2009 issues, and profile view fixes as well.  I have selected 1 item from each category listed in the README accompanying the installation.  There were at least 60 items:

General – AutoCAD Civil no longer closes unexpectedly when you run the LIST command on AutoCAD Land Desktop entities.

Alignments – Sample lines of an alignment that is a data referenced object no longer disappear when you use the RECOVER command to open the drawing containing such alignment.

Civil 3D – 2010 Part Builder returns

Well, I stepped in it this time.

In an attempt to help all those that have been struggling with Part Builder, I pulled out my parts from the 2009 backups, and loaded it up.  I needed the part for a design, and thought now was a good time to dig in and take care of what I agreed to.

…Thanks BTW for all the patience you have offered.

I whipped the Part List up and threw the new part size to it.  Not sizes, just size.  The list did not come through. 

Now many of you are saying “that is what we are screaming about”.  Well, the list of ailments is broad and wide.  I unfortunately could not get this configuration to fail in 2009.  It however does fail in 2010.

After hours of reading and plugging, I got it working.  I did some huge research and customization and I may have 30% of our woes worked around, and I think it will work on both versions.  While working, it is not yet seamless.  I will need to back through it all to be sure, and that will take a bit of time.

Also, those of you that are on other structure types, I did not forget you either.  I will port this over to those as soon as I can.

Look forward to some results and modifications soon.  Go ahead and post issues you have with the configurations here, and we can address then as we go.  If you are having trouble with the tutorials specifically, then keep posting concerns as comments to those tutorial pages.

Civil 3D – Service Pack 2 is available AGAIN

That’s right, they’re gonna try again.  Autodesk released Service Pack 2 in late February.

You may recall that Autodesk notified me that SP2 was available to fix my woes.  I sent the message out that day.  It was subsequently removed from distribution within 24 hours, but failed to notify anyone.  (Chuck from JBI Partners clued us in).  Thanks again Chuck.

So this time, I thought I would wait awhile before I sent out a link to something that would be taken away.

Here is Update 2.1

I was going to list the fixes, but it’s a big list.

Check out the readme for the list

Here are just a few tidbits, some useful, and some downright funny.

• WBlock Points works again
• Grip editing a pipe object with Osnaps enabled no longer causes the program to close unexpectedly
• Editing a parcel curve no longer causes the program to close unexpectedly
• Matchline text is now displayed in sheets that are placed into a new drawing.
• Promoting a data-referenced alignment no longer causes the program to close unexpectedly.
• A drawing that contains design criteria and was saved in a Windows XP environment can now be opened using Windows Vista. Previously, the design criteria file could not be found. (that’s hilarious)
• An issue with polylines not retaining their settings has been resolved. Previously, linetype settings would not remain defined when a drawing was saved and reopened. (also hilarious)

Inventor – DWG wizard Selective import is empty

Here is a problem some VISTA users have.  The DWG import wizard viewer “Selective import” control is empty.  One reason is of course VISTA, but another may be because of constant uninstall and reinstalls of Design Review.  I have not confirmed the latter, but I do suspect it.

I went looking for some info on this, and found the ‘known issues’ list in numerous places.

The DWG import wizard viewer “Selective import” control is empty: You may notice in the DWGIN wizard’s viewer page that the “Selective import” control is empty (this control lists the layers in a DWG file). This indicates that a module needed by the viewer is not registered (because a lack of user privileges).

In Click Start > locate the program for “Command Prompt, ” and right-click it as run the program with the option “Run as administrator”

To register You cannot start the cmd.exe from Run…” menu for this procedure. When the command prompt is active, navigate to where dxoemviewer.arx is located (c:\program files\aoemview 2008, by default), and then enter the following:

Regsvr32 dxoemviewer.arx

link to the source information