Tolar Manufacturing - Autodesk Inventor of the Month for January 2012

“Neither team has anything but pride to play for at this point, but our guys have got a lot of heart and they've shown me that all year.”
Jamie Keefe

Sometimes when you return from vacation, you find that something unpleasant has "hit the oscillating cooling device", and the day you took off is now getting made up in the overtime you're working to fix whatever has broken loose.

This time, when I returned from my snowboarding trip, I was greeted by something far more pleasant.

Tolar Manufacturing was announced as the Autodesk Inventor of the Month!

Tolar Manufacturing makes bus shelters for cities all over.  They're designed in Autodesk Inventor, and their presentations are shown in Autodesk Showcase.  They're storing all that CAD goodness inside of Autodesk Vault.

Example of a Tolar Bus Shelter rendered in Autodesk Showcase

Between using Inventor, Showcase, and Vault.  Tolar is able to design, present, store, and reuse all their data.  Inventor makes the data more robust, Vault allows the file to be tracked, located, and reused, and Showcase allows them to present the design intent to the cities that will be using their products.

It's a nice little engineering circle of life.

So why am I beaming with pride?  I helped set up their Vault, install their Inventor, and train them on Showcase.  It's really exciting for me to see where they've gone. 

Does that mean I was an indispensable part of the team?  That they "could have done it without me?" 

No, I just played my small part.  They took the tools, and ran with them.  The credit is truly all theirs.

I'm just happy that I got to play that little part!

So here's a video!  Not mine though.  This one is all about Tolar, and what they've been able to accomplish! 

Maybe it'll inspire all of us to look again and our tools, and make sure we're using them to their full potential!

On Vacation Today!

Hey, everyone!

I'm pushing this weeks blog post back a few days. 

I'm on one of my winter holidays up to Mammoth Mountain, Ca. 

I hope everyone has a good Monday!  I know I will!

This was my weekend! How was yours?

Creating Custom Content for Autodesk Inventor Content Center - Part 4 (Hint: Editing Family Tables)

“I won't deny there's some big changes coming down the road.”
Rick Higgins

In my last blog post on Content Center, I wrote about adding components to Content Center.  But just because the component is added, doesn't mean it's ready yet.

An image of the wood screw I placed into Content Center in my last blog

There may be fields to be added, removed, or changed.  You might want to add components to your tables, making more variations of your part available.

So this is a blog on how you can start making changes to your tables, expanding them and making them work for you .

In this video, I take the wood screw that I added to my Content Center in my last blog, and add some stainless steel variations, remove an unneeded column.

I'll also make one of the columns a "Key" column that will allow me to choose a Stainless Steel or Carbon Steel wood screw.

Placing the screw.  Nominal size, Total Length, & Material are my key columns.

I wish I could cover all the possible changes that could be made, but there's just too many to cover.  But the video should help get you started!

KETIV's 2011 Autodesk Manufacturing Academy Recordings are Out!

“Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded”
Virginia Woolf

At long last!  After much hard work, the bow tie on the 2011 edition of KETIV's Autodesk Manufacturing Academy!

The videos!  They're all up and ready for download!

So if you've attended the classes presented by the the KETIV technical team, or even if you didn't attend, and want the benefits of the course materials.  Take a swing by the session archive and download all the materials!

Click HERE for the link to download the materials!  

Fire away and start eating up some bandwith!  ;-)  You can even download the 2010 and 2009 materials too!

I hope those who attended took some useful things away!  Go

I hope to see you all, (and a few more) at the next 2012 KETIV AMA!


And as a trailer for the movie, here's a sample of the classes on Autodesk Showcase, so you can get an idea of what's available!

Special thanks to Tolar Manufacturing for providing us with some great real world samples to use in the session!

Autodesk Showcase Part 1 - Importing Models




Autodesk Showcase Part 2 - Changing Environments



Autodesk Showcase Part 3 - Assigning Materials




Autodesk Showcase Part 4 - Changing Materials




Autodesk Showcase Part 5 - Adding Lights