How to make animations in Autodesk Inventor 2012?

6 answers

• 
  MECA 8 months ago

  Hi Hardi.

  There are three ways to make animations within Inventor.

  The best way is using the Inventor Studio Environment. In which you can create a very elaborate animation with moving parts, fading elements, camera movements and more. There you can also setup lighting styles, surface textures, background images, etc. You can render the animation and obtain nice videos. It’s very easy to use, just a couple of tutorials and you’ll master it in no time.

  The easiest way is directly in the Assembly environment, using the “Drive constraint” tool. Which basically allows varying the constraint’s offset/value in time. You will have to create a constraint to define the part’s position and then drive it (right click over the constraint and select Drive Constraint). You can chain several constraints to the first one, but you can only drive one constraint at a time. It makes a very simple animation and the video export quality is not very good.

  The third way is a bit more complicated. You can setup a Simulation in the “Dynamic Simulation” environment, including real life variables and then export it to Inventor Studio and render it from there.

  Hope I helped out!

  Cheers!

• 
  Manolis Theofilos 8 months ago

  CAD MECA is right. For a quick tutorial you can visit this guy on youtube:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_BWqulx3dg . Even though he uses 2009 version the same rules apply. Also search for Rob Cohee on youtube. The guy has made all the tutorials from text to video presentations. They helped me a lot. Furthermore you can go from your start up screen in Inventor to Tutorials. It will direct you straight to Autodesk's website where you can find tutorials for all of Inventors features including animation.

• 
  Manolis Theofilos 8 months ago

  John Inventor could have a lot more goodies in terms of visual presentation (renderings, animations etc). Solidworks rendering capabilities are far better. But if Autodesk would have all those extra tools built in the Inventor Pro then there would be no room to sell Autodesk Showcase. I am not saying this is a good way to sell products, but this is how it is. For me that I feel that Inventor suits my needs better than Solidworks, it is really frustrating not to be able to produce a decent render and being forced to use other software for this.

  Comment (1)

  1. 
     MECA 8 months ago

     I know what you mean Manolis, I totally agree. I like very much the Inventor Studio Environment for creating animations, and I think the tools and timeline are very well developed, however, the rendering quality is not that good when you compare it with Showcase, Keyshot and many others.

• 
  WILLIAM 8 months ago

  Hi Hardi I don't know if this is much help to you or you have read this all ready but here is a link, sorry I couldn't be more help.

  http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/search?source=help&product=Inventor&q=animations&language=ENU

• 
  John 8 months ago

  Hi there.. To be honest I am struggling to animate using constraints... Basic fade is no problems as with the side show animation, these are easy to achive. I did a couple of test by saving the tutorial animations.. FIrstly.. I do not want to save a vIdeo since that can cause issues with files size and also, the video formats that are created will not work on a Mac..

  Its a real shame that Inventor Publisher or Inventor Pro will not save an aniamted pdf.. This to be honest is a real let down..

  The tutorials are ok but not good, and some things are a bit confusing.. The good thing about those is, I can add my own comments and then submit them. This is an excellent way to get the best outcome for all. I would like to see a lot more visual aids in the tutorials. I am not sure why I cannot see some of the featurs in the tutorials. I just get to see a small icon top left as if the file is not availble or I need some other sofware to view it... Really not sure..

  So many parts of Inventor Pro are just amazing.. It took me a little while to get my head around the process but now I have some understanding I feel I can cope with basic modelling..

  I really love using this software and I am guessing even more after I get my head around this constraints process. Afer using timelines with key frames for most of the animations I have ever done, I am finding Inventor Pro is making me feel like a dummy... :(

• 
  John 8 months ago

  Hi Manolls.... Not sure what you mean about rendering.. I gave no mention to that.. In fact I think the rendering options in Inventor are quite adequate, for what I need anyway...

  The only thing I would have liked to have seen, which I gave mention to, is with Inventor having the ability to save an 'animated' pdf...

  Comment (1)

  1. 
     Eyshynskyy 2 months ago

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0noCPVL1Us