Blog · Autodesk Inventor · 2 November 2026

Desktop PC tower in Autodesk Inventor: assembly, drawing, BOM

SphereHarness builds a 15-part PC tower in Inventor, mates it, clash-checks 171 pairs, then makes the assembly drawing and an Excel BOM.

The video plays from YouTube’s privacy-enhanced player only after you click it.

SphereHarness built a desktop computer tower in Autodesk Inventor from plain-English requests: case, motherboard, processor, cooler, memory, graphics card and power supply, then mated them into one assembly. The clash check covered 171 pairs and found no overlaps. The same session produced an assembly drawing and an Excel bill of materials with 15 unique parts and 19 components.

What was asked

Every step was a request typed into the SphereHarness chat panel docked beside Inventor: the case first, then the front panel, the electronics, the assembly, the drawing and finally the bill of materials. The video shows the agent working through them in that order without any command typed in Inventor itself.

What the agent did

Each part starts as a fully defined sketch. The case is a rectangle with its dimensions anchored to the origin, extruded into a base, a top cover and a back panel. The front panel adds five vent slots and a button opening, and 20 dimensions pin the slot sketch.

The electronics follow. The motherboard has four mounting holes, the cooler has eight fin channels, the graphics card has two fan recesses and the power supply has a vent grill. Round parts take a circle offset from the origin so their position is dimensioned too, and the spacer is two concentric circles extruded.

Inventor assembly of the PC tower case with a green motherboard placed inside the open case — The electronics are modelled as separate parts and placed inside the case.

For the assembly the case base is grounded. Every other part is placed and mated to it, with plane mates for position and concentric mates for the spacers and the power button.

Transparent PC tower case showing motherboard, cooler, memory, graphics card and power supply in Inventor — Every component sits where its mate puts it.

Finished PC tower assembly in Inventor seen through transparent side and top panels — The finished assembly: 14 components fully constrained.

The drawing came next: views projected on one sheet, a parts list of 15 lines, dimensions on the overall size and the power supply, and a PDF export. The side view is projected from the rear view, so the two line up at the same height.

Inventor assembly drawing of the PC tower with three views, dimensions, parts list and title block — The assembly drawing carries a parts list of 15 lines.

What we measured

Every sketch read back as fully constrained; the cooler measured 68,400 mm³, the value it was designed to.
The read-back after mating showed 14 components fully constrained.
The clash check covered 171 pairs and reported 0 overlaps.
The bill of materials exported to Excel lists 15 unique parts and 19 components.

Bill of materials card listing 15 unique parts, 19 components, 171 pairs clash-checked and 0 overlaps — The result card from the end of the video: 15 unique parts, 19 components, 171 pairs, 0 overlaps.

What did not work

Nothing failed on screen, but one limit is stated in the video: the four spacers and the power button keep one rotational freedom after mating. For round parts that is harmless, so the agent left it.

Try it yourself

SphereHarness for Autodesk Inventor is described at /inventor, and /help/getting-started walks through the first install and the first request.