Inventor in Residential Construction

[arcadia_x27]

Im curious, Ive never used Inventor so i dont know what its interface is like or anyhting else much about it. Im an ADT user, But the company work for builds modular homes, essentiall these are houses built using the practices and theory of an assembly line. Something that I believe Inventor is geared towards. Would it be possible to use inventor to design the components of a house like the floors, walls and roof. since everything we build with is all pre-designed walls for example are build at the same time as the floor and craned into place farther down the line. the roof truses are all of a standard design the same "part" so to speak. Since inventor is more geared towards this assembly and fabrication train of thought. Would it be possible to use it to design these components and do the shop drawings using it more effectivly than Architectural Desktop or Autocad?

Any opionions or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[mjfarrell]

From my non user knowledge of inventor, it is geared
towards machine prototyping within the cad environment.
I'm reasonably sure one could apply Inventor towards
the building of these modular homes.
Although, it might be akin to using ADT 'only' as a 2d drafting
tool in regards to the features and functions that you
would not use within it.

[rosterreicher]

You could use it.
I've been using IV for 2 years now. It's mainly intended for machines and such.
I've made a few pretty neat home models for some ideas i 've had.(Don't tell my boss, I'm a tooling designer)
Anyhow, It works with components and pieces, Then assembles in assemblies.
Each part is a part file and then assemblies are thier own files.
I made a part for the different boards and plywood sheets.etc. You can select textures for the parts. For the housing stufff it has various wood textures. and you can set your own if you want.

It takes a lot of system recources though. But the interface is very easy. Once you get over the hump. since it is nothing like cad.

Anyhow, hope that helps you.

[bmichell]

IV is excellent for designing parts and making assemblies. It has been geared towards mechanical manufacturing and such contains functions to make threads and fasteners etc. In order to adapt it for the pre-fab houses you would need to develop a library of parts found in the pre-fab homes.

Good Luck with it!

[BigBopper]

I would think one possible drawback could be architectural dimension styles. Inventor is a manufacturing design product, so the dimensioning requirements are very different. I have not tried to create any so I don't know what the problems would be.

[rosterreicher]

I would think one possible drawback could be architectural dimension styles. Inventor is a manufacturing design product, so the dimensioning requirements are very different. I have not tried to create any so I don't know what the problems would be.When i make any arch. Stuff in IV,
I set the Document settings to use Feet. Then in my IDW's i have a dim style set to Feet & fractional (1/ 8 ) On a couple property plans i did i set the dim's to use Yards.

[Ed Jobe]

I would reccommend using it. I started to use IV for our substation's steel structures and would integrate that with adt by xreffing a dwg made from an IV view. So you always have that option for anything IV won't handle. But I think you could do most things better in IV. ADT objects don't get that detailed, e.g. IV's steel for your floor frame is more accurately represented than ADT's and ADT roofs are just boxes, no interior detail. While you could use ADT to model a roofs components, IV does it easier. It has conduit routing too and if you get the package that includes electrical wiring, you can model your panels, breakers, and wiring as well.

You can also assing a mass to your material and IV could calculate the weights in a table for you to give to the crane people. This is because IV builds a solid model whereas adt uses surfaces.

[Ron Oldenbeuving]

I would think inventor would work very well for the sort of application you were suggesting. The use of iPart factories would be particularly helpful for creation of regularly used parts of varying sizes, ie, struts, etc. You could set these to your own standards and quickly start assembling the sorts of sub-assembles you require. Regards

[hand471037]

Also, you might wanna look into Revit if you find that Inventor's mechanical focus is too limiting. Inventor thinks of things as Assemblies; Revit thinks of things as Buildings. This is a very important difference, for the Assembly metaphor doesn't always work when dealing with buildings. It might with the prefab stuff you're looking at, and the steel structures of the base stations someone else mentioned, but there is *no* way that it would work for the kind of work we do here, or anywhere else I've worked in the Bay Area as an Architect.

Also you'd have the advantage with Revit that it already understands what a door is, what a window is, what a schedule is, what interior elevations are, etc etc. You'd probably have a lot less set-up because of this, and it would be easier to produce Architectural-style plans which are usually organized differently than a set of Mechanical drawings. I know that you could make Inventor aware of all these things, but why take all that time to reinvent the wheel? Also how would you deal with site issues within Inventor? While it could totally work, I'd highly recommend that you look at the 'Inventor-like' tool for Architecture that Autodesk makes prior to committing to using a tool meant for a totally different market...