Can someone point me at a video or book that shows me how to place components in Inventor so they actually join together? My attempts just fling parts together at random angles. My parts are from the supplied Vex Kit of parts file and they are plastered in iMates, none of which appears to do anything when I click on it. I have removed Inventor 2017 from my computer (Windows 10) and gone to 2016 as that seems to be where all the instructional videos are but those videos just have a guy saying "You get this component, click on the imates and ther they are. " Well, there they aren’t.
Also, in 2016, there doesn’t seem to be a way to create a new project like there is in 2017.
Perhaps a classroom course is the only option because I am getting really fed up trying to make sense of the online stuff.
So when you place a part and then click it you see the imate dots come up? Can you post a screenshot of a part being selected in an assembly?
What happens when you hold alt (right alt) and drag from one imate to another piece of metals imate?
Have you tried mating normally? Hit C to open the mate menu. Then click 2 different pieces of metal and then click apply.
Aha! This is possibly starting to make more sense. Thank you! I hadn’t realised that if you wait long enough on an iMate you get a list of Edge / Face options to choose from. That’s helped. The menu I get from pressing C is also useful. Haven’t managed to make much sense of Alt+drag yet but I’m sure it will fall into place.
My main concern is that the various online videos I have found, mostly those in the Vex curriculum, have a lot of gaps for someone who hasn’t used Inventor before. The “getting started” video in Inventor is great until you get to placing the handle of the pump at which point it becomes incomprehensible. That’s why I am after a book or similar recommendation. At this stage I am nowhere near confident enough to start teaching building a clawbot with Inventor, especially when it comes to the gears and inserting parts into each other.
The other mistake I made was assuming that clicking on an iMate’s white circle would do something. I now see that those white circles show vaguely where an iMate is.
I would learn to use traditional constraints before using imates. It takes time to learn Inventor, I needed about 40 hours to really get to grips with it before becoming comfortable.
there was some information on creating imates in this thread
https://vexforum.com/t/autodesk-inventor-best-practices-and-tips-tricks/21234/1
(some links are broken, it’s quite an old thread).