Pump Impeller.

This image is of a model that was a reply to a manufacturers request to problem he needed to solve quickly. By the time I got this job it had been attempted by an organisation experienced in selling and using Inventor.  Not wishing to delay the project further and understanding why Inventor would not succeed, I selected the AutoCAD-MDT team.

The result provided to the customer two days latter is what you see.  Now this job again requires the ‘FLEXIBILITY’ I keep harping about, it uses more of MDT’s capabilities than does Block ‘A and B’ and the handwheel but the end product for the customer, running AutoCAD, is an AutoCAD solid.

Obviously the inner and outer portions of this impeller are ‘rotations’, of their sectional shapes, the vane however has to be constructed, all faces, and you will note that the vanes ‘front and rear’ surfaces are not parallel or offset.

At no stage did I use loft which seems to be the favoured tack people take when shown this type of job, it’s a trap, first principals are the solution here unless you want to commit to some heavy and costly software tailoring which has to be paid for out of the returns.  Use the KISS principle.

Again this component could be handled parametrically and again the effort is probably unprofitable. We did revisit this job looking from Inventors eyes but experience tells us that if this was a paying job AutoCAD and MDT are the way to go.  If speed to market is what CAD is about then why Inventor, as this job showed months of delay reduced to 2 days, beat that for productivity.
 

R. Paul Waddington
cadWest.