In last month's article, I discussed the various software products that can be used for documenting your designs. Please keep in mind that these are products that are purchased at a cost. There are other similar products available as freeware and can be obtained through a search on Google. The products that I recommended are the ones that I use and have found them to be well worth the money.

In this month's column, I will be discussing the pros and cons of using Inventor® Studio to create illustrations and animations for documentation.

Inventor Studio
Inventor Studio was introduced with Inventor 10 and provides an environment in which to create photorealistic image rendering and animation. Tutorials provided with Inventor assist a user in learning the Studio application. Be sure to go through the tutorials before attempting to use Studio in any complex situation. It will help to have a good handle on lighting techniques to optimize the appearance of your renders.

Inventor Studio brings additional power into the documentation process. Along with photorealistic rendering and animation, and better studio provides the opportunity to create presentation style graphics in black-and-white.Some of the pros and cons of using studio is that it functions in a relatively easy-to-use environment, but is limited to Inventor parts and assembly files. At this time Inventor presentation (IPN) files are not supported in the studio environment.

When rendering in Inventor Studio, I recommend the use of the PNG image format to prevent degradation of the rendered images caused by resizing and editing of the images.

Choices
Let's look at some of the options for rendering your design. In illustration shown below, I'll start with a simple screen capture from the Inventor graphics window of the Arm_Assy.iam provided in the Inventor tutorials folder on your system. Following that image will be the "Realistic" rendering option from Inventor Studio. Examine each image closely and you can see subtle differences in the shading between the two images.

                    

Image, left: Screen Capture
Image, right:"Realistic" Render

In the next two examples, I'll first show an image created in Inventor Studio using the "Illustration" render mode with the existing model colors, then a second studio illustration with all model colors changed to white.

                    

Image, left: "Illustration" Render
Image, right: "Illustration" Render (All Parts White)

Finally, an image captured from an IDW file. You'll notice that the IDW file will produce a rougher final image because it is being taken from an IDW view. The image from the IDW file will require cleanup in order to create a clean white background.The easiest way to perform the background cleanup will be to use a photo editor (in this case I used HyperSnap6) to convert the image to a pure black-and-white illustration. Typically, the conversion process will degrade the quality of the image somewhat due to pixelization.

                    

Image, left: IDW Screen Capture
Image, right: After conversion to B&W

Once the illustrations for your documentation have been completed, you can now start planning your documentation layout in Microsoft Word or a publication software package. Next month we will go through the steps of creating the final printed documentation for your project in Microsoft Word.

If you would like to practice working with the example shown in this part of the article, you may utilize the Arm_Assy.iam located in the tutorials folder of your current Inventor version. For my example, I simply edited the assembly file to offset the constraints on the parts shown within this article. If you're planning extensive use of tweaks and trails within your assembly file, you will currently be limited to using the presentation environment with screen captures of your IDW views.

For those of you who would like to start working on your own documentation package, I would like to offer this encouragement to each and every one of you. Everyone submitting a completed copy of your standard documentation in PDF form to me by December 20th, 2008 will be entered into a contest for one of several copies of the book "Mastering Autodesk Inventor 2009....." that I will be offering to AUGI members.

If you have questions regarding this article or the use of Autodesk Inventor®, please do not hesitate to e-mail Dennis, or visit the AUGI Manufacturing discussion forums located at AUGI.com.

(Discuss this Article! in the HotNews Discussion Forums.)

Submitted by Dennis Jeffrey, an Autodesk Inventor Certified Expert and Autodesk Implementation Certified Expert. Dennis is the founder of Tekni Consulting LLC, a firm specializing in Autodesk Manufacturing Solutions implementation, training and consulting. Dennis has been using Autodesk Mechanical 3D Products since 1987 and has been training and supporting manufacturing customers with Autodesk products since 1986. He has authored numerous book including Creative Design With Mechanical Desktop and Creative Design With Autodesk Inventor, and has co-authored a new book, Mastering Autodesk Inventor 2009 due out in Fall 2008. He will be returning this year to Autodesk University 2008 as a seventh year instructor. Dennis is a moderator for the AUGI manufacturing forums, an AUGI Wish List reviewer, and a columnist. Dennis has released a Live Web Training version of Creative Design With Inventor 2008.

You can contact him at djeffrey@teknigroup.com and visit his website at http://teknigroup.com .