Autodesk Inventor in the application of modular fixture stand

- designer's right-hand man

Autodesk Inventor is a highly efficient mechanical design software, it generates three-dimensional digital model can be designed into a real product designers before get in the future engineering testing and simulation of environment performance, saving time, at the same time, gives the designer more convenient!

Project background

Design department using CATIA 3 d design software for a long time, but because of software purchase cost and use cost is too high, so, in the jig department or have been using AutoCAD Autodesk company? In the 2 d design. With the rapid development of enterprises, upgrading the development of new products faster, product varieties, series and specifications of more and more, has formed a diversified results, it puts forward higher requirements on modular fixture, reliable performance, flexible assembly time is short and the combination of rapid clamp to become the preferred.

Modular fixture is established by a set of good by all sorts of different forms, different sizes of standard components and assemblies, among them, the parts with high dimensional accuracy, high hardness, wearability and has complete interchangeability, and use of these components work together, we can according to the technological requirements of the workpiece processed quickly assemble for machining and inspection, the assembly and so on various type of work fixture.

Over the years, as a result of the limitation of time, software environment, make the overall design and system structure of modular fixture design can serial can't parallel; The workpiece positioning, clamping fixture craft design mainly depends on experience, causing more qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis and less computational complexity, and lack of necessary optimization design, makes the design pattern is not intuitive. In the process of the clamping, the early stage of the design process of the potential problems during assembly and summary to get summary, if can not reach the desired effect and even cause rework. Assembly interference problem in the process of design, for example, if you can't found early in the design can cause the Labour strength of workers increased. The situation has been difficult to adapt to today's rapid and diversified manufacturing requirements.

In order to adapt to the new demand, modular fixture station need to use a moderate cost of 3 d software, he can create a three-dimensional entity model, then using the designed to simulate the 3 d model assembly and static interference, institutional analysis, dynamic interference check, dynamics analysis and strength analysis, etc. At the same time, as a result of the modular fixture components are all standard and series parts, and the quantity is limited, also need software to store and retrieve, various parts of the modular fixture is to identify and direct call SAT, STEP, IGES format file for assembly.

Software selection

At the beginning of the software selection, we need to consider the following factors, first of all, determine the software can identify the STEP or IGES format, such as three-dimensional entity model (add "data"); Second, the software of three-dimensional modelling to be more powerful and easy-to-use; Third, the software also have certain ability of 2 d drawings to be able to change to the SAT, STEP, IGES format file to import, to facilitate fixture manufacturing.

Pre-sale engineers through Autodesk company presentation and introduction, we recognize the Inventor products package not only provides a 2 d drawing with AutoCAD? Mechanical software and data management software, and through "with DWG collaboration" real 3 d design efficiency and give attention to two or morethings two-dimensional engineering design data. Thus, we recognize the Inventor powerful 3 d modelling, the import of CATIA data capacity and avoid data and AutoCAD 2 d design professional and technical advantages of additional investment. So, we eventually bought the Autodesk Inventor PROFESSIONAL 9.0 online and start work applied to the design of modular fixture.

Software applications

As modular fixture technology staff, we hope to have a feasible scheme to solve the series modelling of modular fixture parts, retrieval and secondary use. (FIG. 1 for modular fixture library structure) with the support of Autodesk technical engineers, we are trying to use the Inventor iPart parts (intelligence) function to generate a series of parts. Inventor of iPart is using EXCEL parameter table to form a part family, nature, features a collection of similar parts or components, but slightly different in one or two aspects, such as size, and so on), for large parts or standard parts, high repeatability, similarity systems do not need to every specification of them set up a table, and you can use an original sample parts and parameter table generated iPart, so it can be on behalf of the countless parts. When any need, just call up parameter in the table as a part of name automatically generate a parameter size proportion of parts as shown in the table.