Building with the Frame Generator - Inventor 2013 and Inventor LT 2013 Essentials - page 245

CHAPTER 11
Building with the
Frame Generator
The specialized tools in Autodesk ® Inventor ® software help you shortcut
arduous and repetitive processes. The design accelerators and plastic part fea-
tures you worked with in earlier chapters are great examples of this. Another
is the Frame Generator. The frames you create with this tool are constructed
from dozens of metal shapes contained in the Content Center. Once you place
them, you can control how the frame members are joined together, and if the
skeleton they're based on changes, the members update as well.
Creating metal frames
Editing metal frames
Creating Metal Frames
To build a frame, you must have a sketch (2D or 3D) or a solid model to use
as a skeleton. You place the frame members by selecting edges or by clicking
a beginning point and an end point for the frame element. You can tell the
frame member how to position itself along its direction based on nine con-
trol points around its section that show how the profile will be oriented to
the sketch element. You can also offset the profile a distance from the sketch
axis or rotate the section.
Beginning the Frame
The techniques for building the skeleton of the frame are no different from
any sketching or part modeling technique covered in previous chapters of this
topic. For that reason, I will shortcut the process by placing a inished skel-
eton part into an assembly.
1. Make sure that 2013 Essentials is the active project file, and create
a new assembly file using the Standard​(in).iam template from
the English folder under Templates in the New File dialog box.