Inventor Practical 5 Tutorial Sheet

MFE2103 – Computer-Aided Engineering Design, Autodesk Inventor Practical Sessions

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Dr. Ing. Philip Farrugia 1

Autodesk Inventor Practical Session 4 – Exercises

Exercise #1

• The task of this exercise is to generate the 3D model of the butterfly valve assembly shown in Figure

1. The butterfly valve consists of the following eight components:

o Body;

o Arm;

o Shaft;

o Retainer;

o Plate, nut, and screws (x2)

• The orthographic views (including all the necessary dimensions) of the above components are shown

respectively in Figures 3 to 7.

• The first step is to create the individual components. The 3D model of the screw and of the nut will be

provided and have to be inserted in the assembly module. The 3D model of the other components

must be created from scratch in the assembly module. As a result you will be using both the bottom up

and top down assembly approaches.

• Following are the steps that you need to follow to complete the assembly, once all the components are

inserted/created in the assembly module:

1. Assemble the shaft and the body using first the insert and then the angle assembly

constraints. To apply the insert constraint, select the faces shown in Figure 8a, whereas to

apply the second constraint select the flat face of the shaft and the top face of the body (see

Figure 8b). The angle between these two faces should be 45°. The flat face rotates towards

the right side;

2. Assemble the retainer with the body, using the insert assembly constraint twice. The faces to

select when applying these two constraints are depicted in Figures 9a and 9b;

3. Assemble the arm with the body, using the insert assembly constraint. Select the faces shown

in Figure 10a. Apply the angle assembly to have the arm at an angle of -135° with respect to

the body. To accomplish this, select the top face of the body as the first face to apply the

constraint. The second face to select must be the XZ plane of the arm. To view this plane click

on the + sign located on the left of the arm in the model tree and select the XZ plane. The

resulting 3D model after completing this step is shown in Figure 10b;

4. Turn off the visibility of the body (refer to Figure 11a) and assemble the plate with the shaft.

To accomplish this assembly operation choose the hole features in the shaft and plate as

shown in Figure 11b;

5. Insert the screw and nut by using the place component feature in the assembly module. Copy


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the screw to have two screws ready for assembly in the subsequent steps;

6. Assemble the nut with the shaft and the two screws with the shaft and plate using the insert

constraint in both cases;

7. Turn on the display of the body and the arm. The final assembly is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 – 3D model of the assembled butterfly valve

Figure 2 – 3D model and orthographic views of the body


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Figure 3 – 3D model and orthographic views of the arm

Figure 4 – 3D model and orthographic views of the shaft

Figure 5 – 3D model and orthographic views of the retainer


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Figure 6 – 3D model and orthographic views of the plate

Figure 7 – Orthographic views of the nut and screws

(a) (b)

Figure 8 – Assembling the shaft with the body using (a) insert (b) angle constraint


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Figure 9 – Assembling the retainer with the body using two insert constraints

(a) (b)

Figure 10 – (a) Assembling the arm with the body using the insert and angle constraints (b) resulting 3D model


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(a) (b)

Figure 11 – (a) Turning off the visibility of the body (b) assembling the plate with the shaft using the insert constraint

Note: All the diagrams in this tutorial are found in Tickoo S. (2006) "Autodesk Inventor 11 for Designers", CADCIM Technologies, ISBN 1-932709-17-7.

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Inventor Practical 5 Tutorial Sheet