Did you ever use iCopy for Autodesk Inventor that was available on labs.autodesk.com? If you did (or even if you didn't) you'll be pleased to know that the iCopy tool graduated from Autodesk Labs into Autodesk Inventor 2011.
The iCopy tool allows you to take an assembly and add intelligence to it so that it can be used and re-used within an assembly to update the size, shape, number of components etc. It's a great way to help save you time and effort when wanting to use components that are similar but differ in size, shape and included components.
Here's an example of something that I have been working on this afternoon. This staircase was put together by our distributor Man & Machine here in the UK, and shows just how iCopy can help automate the design process:
There is just one stair tread assembly and one balustrade assembly, we don't need to create an assembly for every different size\shape configuration, we're going to let iCopy do that for us.
All we need to do is author the assembly as an iCopy assembly which tells Autodesk Inventor how to change\configure it during the process (I'll cover this iCopy author in more depth in a later post). Once the assemblies are authored they can then be inserted into another assembly, set the datum points & pattern direction, sit back and let Autodesk Inventor do the work for you.
It's also worth noting that the drawing for each of the newly created iCopy assemblies is automatically created and updated too!
Here's some other videos of iCopy in action that you might find interesting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INBSFhiwV1k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4qgZPv0O_Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKP5WueATvg
Happy Automating!
Source: autodeskmfg.blogspot.com.
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