PART MODELLING

P1

Laurea specialistica in Ingegneria Meccanica

Corso di Simulazione e prototipazione virtuale

Prof. Ing. Michele Fiorentino

michele.fiorentino@poliba.it
MCAD features
• Mechanical oriented
• Parametric
• History based
• Solid
• Multibody
• Surfaces
• Associative
• Integrated DMU
Manufacturing tecnology
▪ Milling
▪ Turning
▪ Moulding
▪ Stamping
▪ Sheet-metal
▪ Composites
▪ additive
3 key elements in MCAD

Usually different file extensions (even form CAD to CAD)

What is a CAD part
Unique element as considered in the enterprise
process

• Make (one manufacturing unit)

• Buy (can be an assembly too!)

Each CAD part has its own part number

File extension (*.ipt Inventor, *.CATPART in

Catia, *.prt solidworks)
 Part numbering

Laurea specialistica in Ingegneria Meccanica

Corso di Simulazione e prototipazione virtuale

Prof. Ing. Michele Fiorentino

michele.fiorentino@poliba.it
Part number - "codice"
• Unique ID of a CAD part in Part NUM
an enterprise (even
extended) = identity card
• BUY parts do not carry vendor
coding (which can change)
• It may change during life
cycle (concept, production,
stock)
Q: How many CAD parts\part numbers?

A: 3

B: 6

C: 4
Q: How many CAD parts\part number?

A: 1

B: 2
Real product Example: the moth sailboat

Bow sticker
1 parte e 2 istanze nell’assieme
3 primary types of PART

Surface - freeform

Prismatic

Sheet Metal
File name convention
Part number = drawing number= filename

BEARING_SUPPORT.CATP BEARING_SUPPORT.CATD
ART RAWING

If a drawing has more than one sheet its part number remains the same and the
sheets are numbered (Sheet1\2, etc.)
Other proprierty fields
• Revision
• Definition: a textual definition of the
part: ex. Screw
• Category
• Nomenclature at the discretion of the
business
• Source (make \ buy
• Description: free text
Part Number Best pratices
• about 7 characters (average human memory)
• Numbers and not letters (for numeric keypad input)
• Avoid starting with repetitions of 0
• Avoid special characters that are not valid from Win\Linux file system (e.g.
"\" and "*", etc.)
• Avoid spaces
Part numbering systems

non-Significant \non intelligent

• sequential or arbitrary es:, 1002, 1003, etc..
Significant\intelligent ("speaking")
• Encoding like : HSC0424PP
• H = "Hardware
• S = "Machine Screw
• C0424 = "4-40, 3/4" long“
• PP = "Panhead Phillips"
Differences
non-Significant \non intelligent
+ Speed of creation (no part information needed)
+ flexibility: non-coded parts can be inserted without problems
- high risk of Error : no clues
- difficult to search and group manually without a common prefix
•Significant \intelligent
+ search speed
+ error reduction: part can be verified by users
- Needs Training
- can be confusing with variations
Parti simmetriche
(right hand RH) and left hand (LH) suffix

"left-hand shown, right-hand opposite"

con dash

-1, LH (shown)
-2, RH (opposite)
Toyota coding
KICKSTARTING
CAD UI
Other CADs
The interface (video)
Creating a project
Whitout PLM you should care of your files

Project allows to:

• Create a folder
• Set common Defaults
• (units, templates, libraries)
• Switch project and keep files in the right place
Default templates
 – 28

CAD
NAVIGATION
Navigation vs part editing
Moving camera Moving the obejct

FIX

FIX

– 29
Why navigation is important
• 80% of modelling time
• complexity
• Small objects (watch)
• Large (eg. airplane)
• Elongated in one direction (e.g beam)
• With cavities (e.g. mould)

Learn to explore the model

Navigation Tools

View cube
Navigation Wheel
Rotation Pivot point
• Set the center of rotation
Look at: perpendicular to surfaces

Right click =
contextual
menu
Download the examples
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor/troubleshooting/caas/downloads/content/in
ventor-sample-files.html
VISUALIZATION
Visual style
Rendering style
Adjusting the performances
 Per type
Visibility
Per object

Radial contextual menu (right click)

THE HISTORY
BASED CAD
PROCESS
History-based CAD
• Geometry breakdown in features
• Ordered list of features is called
the «specification three»
• Features cannot see features of
the future
• Time can be rolled back and forth
time
• 2D features are «adsorbed» by
3D features to keep the tree
simple ( but they can be resued)
Solid fusion
• The feature «add» to previous ones
to create a single part (but
multibody are possible)
• Feature can be «suppressed» to
debug or design temporary variants
 Using the «tree»
• From tree to Geom • From Geom to tree

Three and modelling area can be used to access and modify features
Learn how to use both ways
The order of operations matters (Example)

• Hole before and after shelling

Rollback example
Find relationships
Some fatures depend (son) of other (father)

• Easy to create relationships!

«Killing» a father
• Dependencies can lead to
inconsistencies Erasing all!
• (killing a father feature will
compromise the son)
•

First sketch saved

Erasing home

Child feature saved

@home
1. Familiarize with CAD visualizatiion, navigation, rendering modes
2. Find and open Different CAD files
3. Focus on parts (minimum 3)
4. Study the specification tree with rollback
5. Play around
6. Keep notes of questions and curiosities to ask in class
7. Save nice files to show up