Placing and Configuring the Rooms
Even though two of the three room are 10’ x 10’, you can never place multiple instances of a room unless everything about the room and the contents within will always be identical. Not likely, so just place one instance for each room needed at all times. Notice that all of the rooms I just placed were renamed (look in the browser). Remember, renaming in the browser does not change the file name, and that changing file names is a very bad idea unless you know exactly what you are doing.
Those that work primarily with kitchens will not have as many rooms –in most cases it will be just one –but may have a butler’s pantry, wine room, broom closet, or other attached space that needs to be included. The next room, Exam 4 has a closet. I want the closet to be part of Exam 4, so I will place the closet a tad different than the main rooms. First, I placed and configured the room. No big deal, just a 10’ x 10’ room with two doors…
Because of the way things are structured here, I will place and configure the room just like all of the others at the top level of the model…
As you can see in the image of the browser to the right, the freshly renamed Exam 4 Closet (BOM set to Reference) is sitting at the top level (a direct child of the main assembly).
I want the room to be part of Exam 4, so I expand Exam 4, so I expand Exam 4 in the browser…
Now it’s just a matter of dragging the closet assembly into the Exam 4 assembly. Watch for the black underline, then release the mouse button.
You will get a restructure warning, which is fine. Click Yes to dismiss it.
This all looks really great, however do we work with odd shaped rooms, and or curved walls?
The odd shaped wall is addressed later in this tutorial, but if you have something really unusual you would need to go in and use Inventor to modify the room. Same with the cabinets. If there is a specific room shape you need shown, that would make a good tutorial one I am done with the basic tutorials.
How do we manage colors, I admit to not being the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to inventor. The video’s show everything in gray. What if we want to show the customer, or print out the design to take to the customer? How do we manage the colors for that?
I will be adding more colors to the material library as soon as I can. Right now, the models should be either white or black –but the white may look gray. I’ll see about doing a quick tutorial on adding materials and colors when I get back to my office this PM.
The latest version of the model is on the ftp site ready for download as well.