It would be very useful to be able to sort the ivPartsList in Inventor ETO.  The user should be able to select a property to sort on and the direction of sortation.  

This functionality already exists in Inventor.

While using Intent for drawing creation, it would be very useful to be able to use a workpoint as an entity to attach a balloon/leader to.

It would be useful to be able to search the properties grid.  I think it should be quick enough to just search as you type.  Also it would be good to have previous and next arrows to scroll through the results.

I would like to see a "favorites" option in the property grid.  This would allow us to check the star next to the rule name and mark it as a favorite.  Then we would have a third sorting option to sort by favorites.  I suppose the favorite sorting option could apply to both the categorized sorting and A-Z sorting.

Thanks,

There should be a different (set of) parameter(s) for IvBalloon that "simply" allows the balloon to be connected to the nearest drawing-curve.  Currently, the user must name an edge and that edge must resolve to a drawiing curve in the view -- difficult to get this right.  For IvBalloon, the easiest solution is just to allow a value of :Nearest for the "entity1" parameter.

Sometimes it's more important to control the size of the view than the scale.  There should be a parameter that controls the size of the view (in sheet space), and then the scale should be automatically determined.

It would be very useful if we had a couple of dropdowns that included Children, Methods, and Rules as it is with .net.  In .net, it lists all of the methods in the active class.  This would be useful in the Design Editor as well as in Visual Studio when you are working with design files.

This would be especially useful on large designs where you may have lots of rules and/or children.  You should be able to click on an item (ex. "Length") and the window will jump to that rule.

It would be very useful to have a #Region directive in the Intent language as there is in .net.

For those unfamiliar: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sd032a17%28v=vs.71%29.aspx

Basically regions allow you to expand/collapse sections of code.  This makes organization much easier.

#Region "Child Rules"
    Child testCenters As :IvSphere, Quantity = Length(testParts)
        origin =  GetTestPartPoint(child.index)
        ignorePosition? = False
        Radius = 5
        color = "Green"
    End Child
#End Region

#Region "Methods"
    Method GetTestPartPoint(mIndex As Integer) As Point
        Dim xyz As List = nth(mIndex, testParts).CenterOfMass
        Return Point(first(xyz), second(xyz), third(xyz))
    End Method
#End Region

Sorting by the values in the properties grid will give us the ability to more easily find rules based on the expected values.  This is especially helpful when working on datasets by others who have not properly documented the rules in a way that it is easy to find the rules in question.  In the case below, I know that the tank is 72 inches tall from my measurement of the Inventor model.  If I could sort by the Values then I would be able to very quickly find that the associated rule is very likely TankHeight.  My understanding is that the grid below is a DevExpress grid and column sorting is a property setting.  That simple and quick change would be quite helpful for debugging.

Tool or function to clean-up/remove orphaned member part files.  For example I have a project with about 3000 part files. I know I'm using only a fraction of these parts in the current design. These orphaned parts slow down other processes such as the up-load and down-load of the project to and from the server. Also, creates a burden to the server backup, while having little or no benefit once the design has been complete. I cannot just delete all of the member files and rebuild the model because any drawings that were already started or completed will be compromised.  

It would be extremely useful to have Level of Detail support in assemblies.  It's very common for customers to use levels of detail in their drawings and without this built in one either has to code their own mechanism to create the levels of detail or set the hidden parts rule on the drawing views to hide the components that they don't want.  The hiddenParts approach is slow and leaves the customer with a drawing different than what they would create manually.

Inventor ETO should have the capability to reverse engineer and configure from an existing iPart / iAssembly factory + incorporate rules from iLogic. There should also be an option to create configurations through a flowchart / flowdiagram rather than through code.

I have automated processes for many of my designs (e.g., robust parametric models, perhaps with iLogic or ETO rules), that make it easier to respond to customer requests.  But really, I’d like to put these designs on the web, so customers could try/run them themselves, and download an image and/or STL file, or even a quote.

The lightweight model could have a few components removed/suppressed or swapped out for less detailed components. Some out of the box controls with the ability to further customize using rules.

It would be useful to have visual rule editor where user could create rules visually using drag & drop similar to Visio or Dynamo for Revit:

As it stands, the ETO documentation has improved greatly from a year ago.  What's lacking is documentation describing when to use specific features.  I suggest to make a best practices knowledgebase which answers questions for anyone looking to start a new project.

Some example answers might include:

• Benefits of Server vs series. Is there any reason to use server if everything will be used internally?
• What is the best way to build a large ETO project when considering performance?
• When should we use intent code vs push a function into a dll?(again considering performance)
• If we wanted all out parts to be stored in a database that ETO can just call, what would be the first steps to set up the database and ETO to make them work together?
• Best practices for using ETO to generate a document. (The current example is too small scale.  Maybe have an example that generates a document that will insert items to a loop of bookmarks)

This may look like a lot of suggestions at once.  All I'm asking is for someone who has built a number of ETO projects to put a bunch of advice somewhere ETO developers can read it.  The more topics covered the better.  

I'd be happy to clarify since each of these are problems I've run into over the last year. I'd be happy to clarify or give a longer list if anyone wants.

We commonly use ordinate dimensions on our sheet metal flat patterns on our drawing documents.  ETO does not currently support this.

Have a field in the ETO adoption wizard (parameters window) menu that identifies parameter being driven by iLogic. This  would prevent both iLogic & ETO from trying to modify the same parameter.

Have an improve Project Editor. Let say DesignC is included in DesignB. If you include DesignB in DesignA then Design C is automatically included. Today I would need to inlude both DesignB and DesignC in DesginA. Maybe an option like (keep design hierarchy).