AUTOCAD TUTORIAL AND TIPS

hotautocadtips: Even though you may refuse to read the instructions sometimes, they are important — and the latest release of Publisher includes new tools to help you create them.

Editor's note: This tutorial courtesy of hotautocadtips.


In our personal lives, almost everything we buy comes with some sort of documentation, whether it's assembly instructions for your kid's latest toy or a manual for a new piece of lawn equipment. And what do we do with that documentation? We ignore it and plow blindly forward, thinking, "I don't need to read the instructions!" Maybe we like the idea of making the task more challenging, or maybe it's just an ego trip that we all need to get out of our system at least once.

After the first bad trip down that ego highway, however, we usually realize that the documentation does matter. Especially after attempting to put that final piece in place and realizing it doesn't fit because something is backward or upside down! Needless to say, the better the documentation, the better the chance for success. In fact, poor documentation can be directly linked to product returns and loss of profits.

As engineering professionals, we want to communicate our designs to others in the best way possible. We create highly detailed 3D models, and seek to leverage that digital design as documentation is created downstream. However, one challenge is that the technical documentation departments are often disconnected from the engineering data. Typically, the documentation is constructed from disconnected illustrations or digital photos that can become outdated quickly if design changes take place.

Autodesk Inventor Publisher 2012

Autodesk Inventor Publisher is technical communications software that can help you tackle this challenge and get more benefits out of your 3D models. It can be used by anyone that needs to create documentation to explain and differentiate ideas, designs, and products.

Publisher enables users to leverage designs across the entire organization, creating appropriate documentation for the technical documentation department, field representatives, customers, or executives. The documentation can begin early in the design process, because Inventor models used in Publisher are dynamic and associative; as updates happen in the design cycle, they are realized with an update in Inventor Publisher.

Support system. Publisher 2012 features the ability to import one or several models into a single documentation project. That includes direct integration into third-party 2D and 3D files such as CATIA, IGES, Parasolid, Pro/Engineer, SolidWorks, and UGS. After working directly with 2D or 3D CAD data to create animated assembly instructions, operating procedures, or repair instructions, users can publish their materials to formats such as Microsoft Word, PDF, PowerPoint, AVI, Flash, various image formats, DWF, and vector.

Materials can also be published to mobile devices such as iPhones, Android phones, and iPads. I recently did just that to share an entertainment center modification idea with an associate in a local do-it-yourself store. I found it very helpful to have the video of how I built the entertainment center, as well as the dimensions, in a portable format.

Snapshots and storyboards. Within the Publisher environment, you can control how your documentation is laid out with snapshots and storyboards. Think of these as the foundation for capturing and controlling all you’re editing, whether it is adding dimensions, placing a detail view of a subcomponent off to the side, or adding a parts list. Each snapshot is placed in the storyboard; you can have multiple storyboards with each publication, and you can link snapshots together or maintain them individually. You can also control the timing, description, transition, and order of the snapshots within a storyboard.