How to Create an Assembly in Inventor

Stuck in Inventor? Don't know how to make an assembly? This should help! This assembly was created using Autodesk Inventor 2019.

Open Inventor and select "File" "New" in the top left corner. On the page that pops up (shown in the picture above) select "English" or "Metric" depending on what measurements you used. I used mm to model my parts so, I chose metric. Under assembly select "Standard (mm).iam" if you used the metric system or "Standard (in).iam" if you used the English system.

Select "Place" in the top left corner, under the annotate tab. Be careful not hit the arrow right below it that opens up more place options, that is not necessary.

Open the file you would like to be the first part or the base of your assembly.

Before clicking on anything, right click and use the rotate buttons to orient the part correctly.

After you have rotated the part to your liking, right click and select "Place Grounded at Origin" as highlighted in the picture above. You will only have to do this step for the base of your assembly.

Right click and hit "OK" to finish working with this part.

Select the place button again and bring in a new part. Rotate the new part to orient it to the base. Left click to place a copy of the part down, if you want more than one, left click until you have as many as you need. Once you have as many as you need, right click and select "OK" to continue working with the part.

Select the "Constrain" button under the annotate tab. The constrain command allows for boundaries to be added to a part's movements.

Select the "Mate" button, this causes the faces you select to to face each other on the same axis.

Select one of the two faces you want to face each other.

Select the second face you want, you might have to use the cube in the top right corner to rotate the assembly (as shown above) and find the face.

Select "Apply" to complete the mate constrain. It is highlighted blue in the constrain box, in the example above.

After apply has been hit for the mate constrain, select the "Flush" constrain that is to the right of the mate constrain, highlighted in blue above. The flush constrain places faces side by side, facing the same direction on an axis.

The flush constrain works the same was as the mate, just select the two faces you want to constrain. In the example above two faces are selected.

Continue using the flush and mate constrain until the part can no longer move. A part will turn blue when it is selected, select a part then left click on it to try to drag it. If it does not move, continue to the next steps. If it does move, try adding more constraints.

If a part is a cylinder or has a hole in it, select the mate constrain then find the axis that is most appropriate for the constraint. The axes I chose are highlighted above.

Don't worry about the buttons that replaced the mate and flush, play around with them if you want. Select "Apply" and they will return to normal.

Continue adding parts and constraining them until you complete the assembly. Check and make sure no parts can be removed from the assembly. Do this by left clicking on a part and dragging it, the part should not move.

The hard part is over, the assembly has been made and you've just added a new skill to your tool belt! Now all that is left to do is save it, which you already know how to do but just in case. Select or hover over "File" then select "Save As."

Save the assembly as a new .iam file. This can be done at the beginning of the assembly so you don't loose any work.

All done, thanks for reading!