Autodesk Inventor Tip – How to Create a Custom Sized Frame for Frame Generator

I came across an interesting little request during my daily support of Inventor which I think may be useful for everybody to know. Inventor is full of incredibly useful design tools which are aimed at increasing productivity in common manufacturing situations. One of these is the “Frame Generator”.

By default you will have access to many frame sizes which conform to the various standards (ISO,DIN, ANSI, ETC). But what happens if you want to create a custom sized frame. It’s not the most obvious option in the menus.

Because all the information for the frame generator is accessed through the “Content Centre”, that’s where we need to make the relevant changes.

Before we can enter the custom sizes into the families, we need to make sure that a few pre-requisites are in place. You will need a Re-Write Content Centre Library to which you add your custom parts and families.

Here’s how you do it! Open up your “Projects” Dialogue box and select “Configure Content Centre Libraries”.

If you don’t have a “Read-Write” library available, please click “Create Library”.

You will also have to ensure that you have this library selected after it has been created.

Now we need to go to the “Content Centre Editor” which is located on the “Tools” ribbon.

Now select the beam which is closest to the type of beam you wish to create. For this example, I’m going to use ISO 657/15. Once your beam selected, you can right click and select “Save Copy As”.

In the following dialogue box, ensure you save this to your read-writable library and also change the name so that you can easily identify this family.

You can now navigate to the new copy and right click on it to edit the “Family Table”.

Now you can add rows with the relevant details. For reference, Row 19 is a custom part I have created.

Now when you go to the Frame Generator, you will be able to select your copied family and the custom attributes you have created.

If you are looking to get support for your Autodesk Inventor software just contact Graitec today. If you have any enquiries, please send us a message: