The Autodesk Factory Design Utility provides a content library of System Assets that you can use to create factory layouts. You can also author and publish additional assets into the library, or to a web-based cloud server. You can create the models in Inventor, or you can use models from other CAD systems.
The Asset Builder environment provides tools to author and publish a model into the library. The authoring tools define the interface geometry and the key parameters. The publishing tool saves the file to the library.
The following provides a general workflow for authoring and publishing.
- Open or create a part model or assembly.
- On the ribbon, click
Environments tab
Factory Assets panel
Asset Builder
. - Define the landing surface for the model. Use a planar face or work plane in the model for the landing surface.
- Optionally select an insertion point for the model. The insertion point can be a vertex, work point or a sketch point and can be used to help locate the asset accurately on the factory floor. As an example, you could create a work point on a specific location of the model, such as on the bottom outside corner of a work bench. When placing the model on the floor grid, the work point could be used to snap the work bench in alignment with the intersection of floor grid lines. Multiple insertion points can be specified. When published as a 2D asset, an insertion point can be used to accurately place the asset into an AutoCAD Factory layout.
- Define one or more connectors in the model. Each connector is represented by a green sphere and is a snap point for other factory models. You can also optionally define connector class and property values for assets.
- Define asset properties (iProperties) for the asset.
- Select the key parameters that control different configurations of the model.
- Define two or more variations of the asset using the Asset Variants command.
- Optionally create an annotation descriptor.
- Optionally define MEP connectors using the BIM Exchange command.
- Publish the asset locally or to the cloud.
- Exit the Asset Builder environment.