Guest post by Paul Munford of the blog CAD Setter Out blog.

We all love Autodesk Inventor‘s smooth and clean user interface – but it can make some of Inventor’s powerful surfacing tools tricky to discover. In this post we’ll take a look at five surfacing tools you may wish you had discovered earlier!

Create surfaces using solid tools

A solid feature could really be thought of as an automatic way of creating a number of trimmed surfaces.

All of Inventor’s solid feature tools have the option to create a surface instead – just look for the Transparent Orange Icon.

Extend surfaces and replace face

‘Replace face’ is a really handy surfacing tool that is hidden away with its good buddy the ‘Extend face’ surface tool right here under the 3D model tab > Surface panel

Tip: If you find yourself using these tools a lot, right click and choose ‘Move to main panel’ to make them easier to access.

Note: The ‘Repair bodies’ tool is used to fix up imported geometry.

Loft to point

Did you know that you can loft a profile directly to a single point? This is a great way of creating ‘Domed’ surfaces without have to create a lot of guide geometry.

Tangent and G2 surface continuity

Many surfacing tools in Inventor now support tangency or G2 surface conditions. Remember to click on the drop down under ‘conditions’ to pick your preference.

Move surface body

Surfaces are bodies too! Don’t forget that you can move surface bodies using the ‘Move bodies’ command to be found under 3D model > modify.

Once in the move command, click next to the ‘free move’ icon to reveal options to move your surface body along a ray or rotate it around an axis.

It’s a surface wrap up

Autodesk Inventor’s surfacing tools are powerful and user friendly, once you know where to look! Check them out today and let me know how you get on.

It is always a pleasure to publish a guest post from someone in the Autodesk community. It helps the guest author get more visibility among peers as well as shares some valuable knowledge with the readers of this Between the Lines blog, a win – win for everyone.

About the Author

Paul Munford is the CAD/CAM manager for Halstock cabinet makers in the UK. IN his spare time he is a semi-professional Dodo catcher and skins rice puddings. He also writes the CAD Setter Out blog and talks about CAD a lot if you’ll let him.

Thank you Paul!

If you would like to submit an Autodesk related guest post please Email Me for details and consideration.

Cheers,
Shaan