Placing and Configuring the Rooms
Open the Office model. Inventor sometimes has issues retaining visibility settings, so turn off any planes or walls that may have turned back on, and make sure the visibility of all layout parts are off as denoted in the browser in this image…
You should be able to use the image to get all of the visibility settings correct. This room has no cabinets, so I will not need to turn off walls or anything (for better access while working on cabinetry or millwork), so I am going to shrink wrap it to turn it into a single solid.
You should be able to leave all of this alone and click OK…
In the next dialog, select the first button in the ‘Style’ group-box which will merge out seams and create a single solid, then use the rest of the settings as shown…
A warning about mass properties will appear. Click no, and the shrinkwrap LOD will be created…
All this does is free up system resources a bit, and makes things look a little better with less overlapping parts. It’s not required, but I do it. I renames the LOD (level of Detail) Light Weight. Now, save and close this room, which will bring you back to the master model…
As you can see, you are likely to get a jacked-up LOD like shown above. Expand Office, and double-click the new Light Weight LOD and that will go away…
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.