INSTRUCTIONS
Table of Contents
How to edit and change text in Inventor
(Click on images to enlarge)
Open the DEMO Dovetail Lid file in Inventor and you should be presented with this screen.
Set the view to TOP by clicking on the VIEW CUBE in the upper right hand corner.
Top View
Click on one of the letters and you are presented with a mini menu bar.
Hover over the buttons till you find the one that says EDIT SKETCH. The text will turn red. Click this button and you will be taken to the EDIT SKETCH screen.
Edit Sketch screen
If you hover over the text it should turn red. Double-click on the text to be taken to the FORMAT TEXT screen.
Format Text screen
Highlight the text you want to change and type in the new text
Don’t stress if the text you enter wraps onto the next line in the text editor.
However, if you use a SPACE or hit the ENTER key the text will wrap onto the next line in the design window.
You don’t want that.
When done, click the OK button to be taken back to the EDIT SKETCH screen.
Back in the SKETCH EDIT screen, the text entered is too long to fit on our design and falls outside the red dashed bounding box.
This is easily fixed by going back into the TEXT EDITOR and adjusting the width. Double-click on the text again to be taken back to the TEXT EDITOR.
In the TEXT EDITOR we’re going to adjust the width of our text by changing the value in the TEXT WIDTH PERCENTAGE window.
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100 was too long so enter a lesser percentage to reduce the width of the text.
In this example I have entered 90 (90%) of the original text width.
Hit OK when done.
90 is still too long to fit our design.
Double-click the text to go back into the TEXT EDITOR and we’ll try again.
This time we’ll try 70 (70%)
At 70 it now fits within our bounding box, but we could increase the width just a tad more to make it fill the area.
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At 80 the text fits within our bounding box.
We now click on the FINISH SKETCH button at the top of the window.
This will apply our changes and adjust the extrude (the height of the letters) to fit our new text entry.
We are taken back to the TOP view of our design.
To see our design in 3D view, we need the HOME view.
Up in the top right hand corner, click on the icon above the VIEW CUBE that looks like a house… HOME.
Done.
Save your changes.
NOTE: This method also works for text that at 100% is narrower than our design area and needs to be “stretched” to fit.
Apply a factor greater than 100 to the text, such as 120, 132, 200 etc. to find the ideal fit.
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How to adjust an EXTRUDE (height of your model)
(Click on images to enlarge)
To adjust the height of an extrude, click on the extrude and from the popup button menu that appears select EDIT EXTRUDE.
The height of the extrude is adjusted here under DISTANCE A.
Here I have changed the height under DISTANCE A to 20mm.
Click OK to return to your design and view the results.
Model extruded to 20mm.
Extrude adjusted to 3 mm.
Click OK.
3 mm extrude.
When done, save your work.
How to export your completed model as an STL file
(Click on images to enlarge)
To export your model as an STL file…
Click on FILE (top left hand corner)
Click on EXPORT,
Click on CAD FORMAT.
Select a folder to SAVE IN
Give your file a NAME
From the SAVE AS TYPE dropdown menu select STL files (*.stl)
At the bottom of the window click on OPTIONS.
Set the options as shown in the screenshot and click on OK when done.
Click on SAVE and your file has been exported in STL format ready to be loaded into a 3D printer and printed.