What are Design Accelerators?
Autodesk supplies many Design Accelerators within Inventor, such as Bolted Connection, Frame Generator, Shaft, O-Ring, and Spring to name just a few. Today I’m focusing on V-Belt Generator.
Why would you want to use the V-Belt Generator? To improve the design time and accuracy of using power transmission V-belts. Want to make sure your design and components meet ANSI and ISO standards.
About Design Accelerator
The Design Accelerators are found within an Assembly file (.iam) on the Ribbon. Click the down arrow and select V-Belts. Allthree Belt Generators act in the same way. To use any of the Design Accelerates you need to be in an assembly IAM file.
Generating a V-Belt
First choose the type of belt that you want to use.
Then select the surface or work plane that will act as your belt’s midplane.
Adding custom V-Belts
On a side note, if your company uses different belt sizes then the ones provided, you will need to create a custom belt.xml file and import that file. You can find the XML file in this location. C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor 2021\Design Data\Design Accelerator\Tables\VBelts\Classical
You need to add the name, size, length, and Correction Factor for Belt Length.
Next, within the Pulleys section, change the type of pulley by selecting the down arrow next to each pulley. You can further define your pulley’s properties by clicking the button with the “Three Dots” next to the drop down arrow.
The options for how the pulley is going to be represented are Component, Existing, and Virtual. You should also define how
the pulley is going to be positioned, whether it is going to be fixed, fixed by position, sliding, driven sliding.
Lastly, we need to specify where in the assembly our belt is going to reside by using the Select Geometry button to locate the pulleys.
The Calculation tab allows you to refine your design by specifying loads and properties. As you enter the required inputs,periodically click the Calculate button at the bottom of the tab. This will verify that your design is within or out of design compliance. If your geometry and or options within the dialog turn red, this indicates that your design is out of design compliance and requires further modifications. Make sure you always select Calculate after making changes to validate your revised design.
Need assistance? Give us a call at 1-866-465-3848 or shoot us an email at
support@ketiv.com and our team will be happy to help!
Click the thumbnail below to watch the full Autodesk Virtual Academy session on the topic:
