TechTuesday – Autodesk Inventor Using Bolted Connections

In today’s video we take a look at Bolted Connections with Autodesk Inventor

In this video, we’re going to have a look at the bolted connection tool inside of Autodesk Inventor. So the bolted connection tool uses our content center. And it allows us to place bolted connections. So we’re gonna start off by looking at the blind connection type and then we’re gonna move on to the through type.

Bolted Connections – Blind connection type

So, first off you’ll note that there are a bunch of different placement types, but we’ll start with linear and work our way through. So the tool itself actually guides you through each stage of placing a bolt, but for the purpose of the video, I’ll walk you through it. So the first thing is it’s selected start planing, and it’s actually asking me to select a plane where the connection starts. So that’s going to be over here. Now because I’m using linear. I’m basically dimensioning in 3d as I go. So it needs that I mentioned over here, 30, dimension over here, I’ll put in fitted again, blind start playing. So what it’s going to do is it’s going to drill through my angle over here, and then it’s going to go into this block and the blind side plane’s going to be over there.

Right. And I can see my voltage connection being built up. So at the moment, those are just sort of nominal sizes. You’ll see that I’m using a 12-millimeter diameter, and I can change it to say a 20 or a 10 whichever size I’d like, and I can choose what type of profile I want to use. In this instance, I’m using ISO, just go back to a 12.

You’ll see that my hole being drilled is a 13.5. And that the hold on the bottom over here is an M 12 by 1.7568. And that is defined by the standard that I’ve chosen. So I’m going to click add fastener. This goes into my content center and it chooses my bolts for me. And again, I can choose by standard. I’m going to stick with ISO for the moment, and there’s all the ISO bolts available and I can filter this. So in this instance, I want to look at socket, head bolts, and I’m going to go and choose the four seven, six, two. That places it in automatically. And you’ll see that what it’s done is it’s drilled this hole for me based on a 55 millimeter long bolt.

Now, if I drag this bolt longer, you’ll see that my hole stays a little bit longer with me. And the cool part about this is that I’m getting a preview on my screen over here so I can tell that’s about as big as I wanted. It’s setting a size for me and it’s drilling the hole for me all based on the standard.

So when I’m happy with that, I can say, okay, we’re applying, that’ll add it into inventor. Now I can also save the setting as my own template to use again later. So I can go add this in and all I’m going to do is in the call this one blind  and say, okay,

That’s going to place that in. So what are the important key takeaways here? Well, if we look at this, these two components, what it’s done is it’s drilled a hole through both of these parts for me in this instance, that’s a tapped hole and this one’s a through-hole clearance.

Bolted Connections – On point

So the next method of placing a bolted connection, we’re going to use on point and same rules apply, which is our start plane, which is our points. We choose our blind start plane, and I can then go and choose to set in one of my favorites. And in they go, and as before the holes are drilled through and everything’s in there.

The next bolt type is the concentric type. So this works by having start plane as well, then uses a circular reference, a blind start plane, we can add in secondary circular parts as well. And if there’s a pattern, you can tell it to follow a pattern. And as before was set in a favorite say, okay. And in it goes on that concentric reference.

Bolted Connections – Through type

All right. Let’s look at the through type. So if you’ve got a through time, go by on point for the moment similar as before needs to start plane, needs the point points, then it needs a termination, so this is where we’re going to bolt through. And if we look at a top view, but so you can see our two through holes and what we do now is we’re going to grab a bolt we want add in the washer. So those two fasteners. Bolt and washer above our holes and below our holes, we’re going to want a washer and then a nut. And again, I can now add this as a favourite and we’ll say, okay, that is then built for me. And as before, we now have our holes going through both components as we’d expect.

Bolted Connections – On hole/By Hole

All right. Last one. Let’s look at on hole by hole. So what we did start playing then asks us to choose an existing hole. So choose that one over there. And it’s chosen a diameter of 12 over there. We’re using an isometric. So what it needs is the termination plane to have to follow the pattern. So it’ll go and grab all the holes if we want and toggle that on or off. And just to be clear, our current plate doesn’t have any holes in it. So once we did it in a favourite, all of our bolts are placed and the holes are now drilled into our plate at the back. So that’s a quick overview of all of the different connection types you can use your bolted connections for. I hope you found that useful.

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