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Using Design Accelerators in Autodesk®

Inventor™ Ravi Akella – Autodesk, Inc.Ales Ricar – Autodesk, Inc.

MA 201 - 3P Getting things in gear are easy with the Design Accelerators in Autodesk Inventor. Find outhow functional design capabilities allow you to design gear, belt, and chain drive systems using engineeringknowledge to drive the geometry.

About the Speaker:Ravi joined Autodesk in January 2006, and is a Product Manager for Inventor at the Manufacturing SolutionsDivision (MSD). Formerly, Ravi was a Solutions Engineer with MSD sales team and a member of theSimulation Experts Group. Ravi has experience presenting the capabilities of Autodesk Inventor to the CADindustry press, at Autodesk University 2006 and at Autodesk’s annual training event for reseller engineers.

Prior to joining Autodesk, Ravi worked at LMS International, makers of engineering analysis software built towork with CATIA V5. While at LMS, he gained considerable experience in kinematics and dynamics, FEA,and solid mechanics. Ravi earned a Master of Science degree in Structural Mechanics from The University ofIowa in Iowa City in 2002.

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8/6/2019 Inventor 1


8/6/2019 Inventor 1


TMUsing Design Accelerators in Autodesk® Inventor

What is a Design Accelerator?

Well the first place to look was the dictionary and this is what I found…

Design• a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of something

before it is built or made

• the art or action of producing such a plan or drawing

• underlying purpose or planning: the appearance of design in the universe

• a decorative pattern

Accelerator• a foot pedal which controls the speed of a vehicle’s engine

• an apparatus for accelerating charged particles to high velocities

• a substance that speeds up a chemical process.

Even though these definitions cannot be used directly in the context of Autodesk Inventor, they guided mewhile in my attempts to come up with a definition that is in the context of this session.

Design Accelerators are some of the most time saving and productivity enhancing features in AutodeskInventor. They empower the designer to focus on solving the design problem and save him/her time andenergy by generating the geometry required for the solution. Design Accelerators also allow the designerto validate the design without needing to leave the software and needing to do lengthy hand calculations.

Plain and simple, Design Accelerators take the process of creating validated solutions for designproblems to warp speed leaving traditional geometry creation practices in the dust.

History… Czech it out

Design Accelerators were integrated into the Autodesk Inventor product following the acquisition ofMechSoft, Inc. in 2004. MechSoft, Inc., based in Decin in the Czech Republic, had over 12 years as aCAD knowledge and productivity developer prior to the acquisition.

Autodesk has greatly benefitted from the Decin team’s main focus, which is Mechanical Design &Knowledge Management.

Capabilities… the list is endless… almost

Design Accelerators in Autodesk Inventor facilitate the creation and validation of many commonly createdcomponents.

The following is the list of components that can be generated using Design Accelerators…

• Bolted Connections

• Shafts

• Parallel spline connections

• Involute spline connections

• Key connections

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• Disc Cams

• Linear Cams

• Spur Gears

• Bevel Gears

• Worm Gears• Ball Bearings

• Roller Bearings

• Plain Bearings

• Compression Spring

• Extension Spring

• Torsion Spring

• Belleville Spring

• V-Belts

• Synchronous Belts

• Roller Chains

• Clevis Pin

•

Joint Pin• Secure Pin

• Cross Pin

• Radial Pin

As you can see the list is very extensive and all of thesecomponent generators have in built calculators to validate themin the context of the assembly’s design issues.

Wait there’s more…

There is another set of tools in the Inventor DesignAccelerators; these are a set of mechanical calculators for thefollowing facets of a design…

• Weldso Plug and Groove Weldso Butt Weldso Spot Weldso Fillet Welds (Connection Plane Loads)o Fillet Welds (Spatial Loads)

• Solder Jointso Butt Solder Jointso Bevel Solder Jointso Lap Solder Jointso Step Solder Jointso Step Tube Solder Joints

• Hub Jointso Slotted Hub Jointso Separated Hub Jointso Cone Joints

• Fitso Toleranceo Limits and Fitso Press Fits

• Power Screw

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• Beam Column

• Plate

• Brakeso Shoe Brakes

o Disc Brakeso Cone Brakeso Band Brakes

And finally, the Design Acceleratorincludes an Engineer’s Handbook thatcontains formulae associated for thefollowing…

• Joints

• Shaft Generator

• Bearings

• Spring Generators

• Transmission MechanismsGenerators and Calculators

• Beam and Column Calculator

• Tolerance Calculator

• Plate Calculator

As is evident from the extensive listabove, Design Accelerators have maturedover the releases to include a whole host of tools.

In this session, we will focus on a particular design, an overhead hoist assembly. This is a good exampleof the type of design tasks that can be performed with the Design Accelerator in the material handlingindustry, which has traditionally represented a large and successful segment of the user base for

Autodesk Inventor.

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Gearing up…

The first part of the session focuses on the Spur Gear Generator portion of the Design Accelerators.

In this case the Design Guide type is set to Module and the geometry for the gears is created by thegenerator based upon the Helix Angle, number of teeth and the selections for the Cylindrical Faces andthe Start Plane.

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To emphasize the design validation abilities of Design Accelerators we then move to running somecalculations on the gears based on loads…

The strength calculations can be done according to various different methods in this case we will use theISO method.

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After setting the Power and Speed values for one of the gears and picking the desired material propertiesfor the gears, we can proceed to set the Required Life and the Factors for Additional Load, Contact and

Bending.

The results will confirm is the design meets the strength requirements, if not, the geometry is modifiedand the modified results are just one more click away.

Finally, all there is left to do is to save the newly created gear parts and the gear set assembly in thedesired folders with the desired names. The gears are created, correctly constrained and validated.

The best way to furtherexplore the formulae usedto determine the Factorsand do these strengthcalculations is to look at the

Engineer’s Handbook builtinto the DesignAccelerators and go underTransmission MechanismsGenerators and Calculators-> Spur Gears Generator ->Strength Calculations ->Strength calculation withCSN 01 4686, ISO 6336and DIN 3990.

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Keyed in…

The focus in the second section of the session shifts to the creation and validation of keys using DesignAccelerators.

Selecting the reference cylinder and planes creates the key geometry. The number of keys and theirangular placement is also set and then it’s time to pick the type of key from the Content Center, which tiesdirectly into the Design Accelerators.

Once the keys are in place 3D grips make it possible to change the size of the keys and rotate theplacement about the shaft axis.

Yup… you guessed it right, the calculations to validate the key connections come next.

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The Power and Torque values used here are the same as those used in the Spur Gear calculations. Aftersetting the materials for the keys, shaft and hub and setting the Loading Conditions, it’s time to run thecalculations.

The Type of Strength Calculation is set to Design Key Length if the intent is to have the key length

computed based on passing the strength requirements. This is a clear case where the validation of thedesign is driving the geometry for the solution instead of being a back-end checking process.

The formulae used in these calculations canbe explored in more detail right in Inventorusing the Engineer’s Handbook in DesignAccelerators by going to Joints -> MovableJoints -> Key Generator.

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Shaft!

The Shaft Component Generator in Design Accelerators has seen considerable changes in Inventor2008. The new user interface makes the workflow for creating and validating shaft designs a lot more

intuitive.

The various sections are added and the diameters and the lengths are determined based on the gear andbearing geometry.

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The loads used to perform the shaft calculations come from the Results of the Spur Gears ComponentGenerator calculations. These results are output as an .html file that can be opened in a browser windowand referred to during the shaft calculations.

The shaft calculations are based on formulae that can be foundin the Engineer’s Handbook under Shaft Generator -> Shaftcalculations formulas.

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Splining…

The alternative to creating key connections is to create a spline connection between a shaft and thegears. In this case, the Parallel Spline Connection Generator in the Design Accelerators is used to create

the spline geometry, the cuts in the hub to accommodate the splines and validate the spline connectionfor strength.

After picking the selections for the shaft and hub references and modifying the length of the splines usingthe 3D grips, the calculations can be done to check the splines for strength.

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The Power value is the same as the one used before for Gear and Key connection calculations. Thespeed in rpm is added in, the safety factor is set and the material properties are set. The calculation typecan be changed to Length or Diameter Design to create geometry that satisfies strength requirements.

As seen in the other component generator sectionsthe formulae used to do the strength calculations arein the Engineer’s Handbook at Joints -> MovableJoints -> Parallel Splines Generator.

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Using Design Accelerators in Autodesk® InventorTM

To solve or not to solve…

The components created using the Design Accelerator can be set to solve manually or automatically. Thismeans changes needed to accommodate any modifications made by the user can be set to being

automatically computed or manually. This choice may have a performance implication and must bechosen wisely to achieve maximum productivity.

In the case of the Parallel Spline Component, any changes made to the shaft diameters will causechanges in the spline geometry which can be manually or automatically solved.

The component can be set to automatically solve by right-clicking on it in the browser or the modeldisplay and selecting the Component -> Automatic Solve or Manual Solve option.

As we part…

We have looked at Design Accelerators to create geometry, validate the components for strengthrequirements and explore the underlying formulae sourced from the Engineer’s Handbook in order tocreate a gear box for an overhead hoist assembly.

There are many such applications where different components and calculators in Design Acceleratorscan be leveraged to create complete and validated designs much faster than traditional modeling andvalidation methods.

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