I’m here to let you know why you should give Autodesk Inventor Stress Analysis another shot and to teach you how to it up and running.
Tuesday, September 06, 2016
How to get started with Autodesk Inventor Stress Analysis
I’m here to let you know why you should give Autodesk Inventor Stress Analysis another shot and to teach you how to it up and running.
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I haven't seen inventor taught or used here at CMU yet, and I must say that I fully advocate that we teach at least the basics of it to the freshmen/sophomores since I believe it is an extremely useful program. Inventor provides a different way to think about drafting. While AutoCAD smoothly handles, for the most part, complex two dimensional drafting, I have found it to be difficult at best when dealing with complex three dimensional objects and machines. Inventor, however, was created to show and test the intersection of parts. And stress analysis is only one of the many features the program offers. Drawings and images are started as part drawings (for example, two different gears), and then can be imported into an assembly drawing (the two gears interlocking). The draft-person can then interact with the three dimensional figures to "test it" (for example - rotating one gear will rotate the other). The program can also automatically generate a parts list and a standard orthographic drawing of the machine. Stress analysis can be preformed on each part and the machine as a whole. This might be a little unnecessary for a typical theater (like hitting a finishing nail with a sledgehammer), its still really fun and useful for more complicated projects.
Yes, Finite Element Analysis is pretty darn cool. I want to say it is another reason not to use AutoCad, but in reality drawing a whole show in Inventor or Solidworks is not feasible either. AutoCad and VW are just far superior detailing programs especially for overall plates such as GPs, Elevations, and Sections, while Inventor and SW are much more adept at handling complex 3d parts. Realistically, the only way I can see integration of Inventor or Solidworks and its super powerful 3d modeling and analysis features is in conjunction with AutoCad or Vectorworks. Perhaps the tech design is mostly done in AutoCad, but for any units, structures, or parts that require “doing the math” or could otherwise benefit from FEA, perhaps parting that discrete element out to Inventor is worth the extra effort. Once that component is designed, it could be exported and sent back to AutoCad for plating and integration with the rest of the show documents. But the figuring out and technical design could be done in Inventor.
Although I have extremely little experience with AutoCAD or any digital drafting in general, the Inventor Stress Analysis plugin seems extremely cool. I believe this part of Autodesk should be touched upon at least a little to underclassmen, especially when we start experimenting with drafting programs next semester. While reading The Art of Construction by Salvadori, I feel like FEM could be an very useful tool to show a live demonstration of some of the concepts the author mentions in his book. When applied to a true construction, it might be pretty useless when it comes to the usual means of construction (such as platforms, flats) because you know these won't collapse through the typical measures. However, when it comes to complicated scenery, suspension, bridges, atypical construction, the FEM could be an extremely useful tool for novice builders to see and understand where potential stresses in the materials can be. Overall, the FEM would be used to analyze something to see if it is safe to be used.
This is like the super fancy version of what we’re studying in Structures! I, myself, am not familiar with the Inventor program, but from what I can tell from this article is that it is packed with a whole lot of data from the back of my structures textbook. This application could be super useful for either point-testing in a structure, or even whole-structure testing in cases of identifying the best material for the job. If savvy with this program, I can imagine this saving people a lot of time and effort of the structures math problems, and also being able to analyze a structure en masse as opposed to selective points. Also the application of mesh onto the material in question can really show the division of stress and hot spots located from the force, something a free-body diagram might not be able to tell you. I’m super interested in this program, but have no time and little skill to learn it.
Auto CAD just keeps getting better and better, being able to manipulate stress along with other factors is definitely something that would come in handy with most structure projects. I realize that this article just covers that basics of using this add-in but I would be very interested in learning more about this tool and how it could be useful in the theatre world. There are really no excuses now for having a structure failure now or ever. I would be interested to see how professionals are using this tool in their everyday lives. Can you rely on this tool solely to tell you stress or is it more like an insurance policy? Even if it does need some minor tweaks I think it is so cool to see how a computer breaks down problem using FEM and combines that with constrains and materials to give you an numerical value.
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