By Florentina Stirbu
The iProperties of a model in Inventor are a quick and easy way to gather information on physical properties such as mass and volume. However, to obtain an internal volume value for a model there are a few extra steps needed.
First, we’ll create an in-place component in our assembly that will represent the internal volume. Using the Copy Object command, we can obtain a surface composite of the internal shape of the model:
As there are two openings in the top area, the Boundary Patch command is used to generate two more surfaces:
The Stitch command can be used to put together the composite resulting from the Copy Object command and the two boundary patch surfaces. This command can compute to a solid, or the result can be maintained as surface, and then Sculpted into a solid.
The resulting solid’s iProperties will then provide the internal volume value needed.
The video below shows the entire workflow