Inventor 2010 - Limit component movement when constraining

[divingdoug]

Why is it that when you create the first constraint between any two components, the secondary component moves not only to satisfy the constraint, but also in ways that have nothing to do with the constraint.   This is not occasional behavior, it happens every time.

I always have to stop and move the secondary component back out of the way to get to the other features I need to reference to continue.

Is there ANY way to change this unnecessary and annoying behavior?  It really slows my work down..

[ampster401]

Reading Sam's reply made me think of an possible alt solution for your first example where you choose to constrain the feature axis of each "tube" or nipple.

What if you were to manually add a work axis to each tube or nipple, 4 total, one for each tube or nipple.

Then when you go to constrain those two parts, select the work axis to mate to each other rather than the actual part feature axis.

Hope this makes sense.

I'm thinking that the smaller part in your 1st example will then just align to the axis and not move the smaller part so its up against the larger part.

just a suggestion.

[swalton]

I think that Inventor is working as designed. 

This is my take at its logic:

IV tracks the location of your mouse pointer when you select geometry as part of a constraint.  When it applies the constraint, It moves the second component to the first so that the mouse-pick locations on each component are touching. 

Normally this is not a problem for me, but it can be annoying when working on a 60 ft long assy and I place a 2 ft long sub assembly by constrianing the origin planes.  The small sub can get buried in the the parent.