Deleting unwanted styles

[mgoldberg]

I recently did a project where I created a bunch of new sheet metal styles with a name of “nGa FD SM rule”.  In refining and revising and to keep a bench mark set I ended up building a second set “R-nGa FD SM rule”.  One set use k-factor and the other set a bend table.  After refining and revising I want to keep the original set’s name and keep the second set for future use when some other problems are worked out.  So I now have a Sheet Metal styles in the directory for both types of bends but I only want users to be presented with one and both have been saved to the Design Data directory Styles Library.  How can I separate them and keep both, provide my user with only one method today (k-factor) and when ready implement the bend table approach. 

The rest of the styles I’ve created are probably going to remain stable.  However the only solution I’ve been able to come up with is to blow away the current styles start with the default styles and recreate the whole thing.  That would be ridiculous as most other styles (Parts Lists, Dimensions, Revision,…) are fine as they are.  How can this be solved?  All I really want to do is get rid of unwanted styles and then be able to add and remove as the needs and situation change.  I don’t want to “marry the until death do us part”.

If the Styles manager worked as a manager, it would have a collection of all available styles in one column and the other would be a list of styles assigned to the selected project (or active and where so you could go remove them if that is really what need be).  Then styles could be moved to and from each column or put in and taken out as desired.  Obviously it doesn't' work that way and the best I seem to be able to figure our is to be able to add styles from one to the other and not remove them from either.  Worse once they have been used and are out there on some document I don’t seem to be able to remove or purge them.  It would be OK if they only came up on those older documents that had them and then didn't’t show up in the rest but as it seems impossible to purge them once they’ve been used.  To compound this, the available directions and help for the Styles Manager is miniscule at best and as far as I'm concerned for all intents and purposes just not there.

Why can't we have a tool to truly manage (add, delete, copy, change and move them) as needed?

[-niels-]

What if you set up your styles in a local document, then save the ones you want other to use to the style library and keep your "in progress" version for yourself?

As for a tool to manage them, in the windows Start menu > Autodesk > Inventor <version> > Tools > Style library manager.
That works for global management, you already know about update & purge for local managment.

I do agree that it can be hard to get rid of styles once they're in use.

[chad38]

Dude, thank you for telling us that. And thank you, poster, for asking as well. It's been annoying the heck out of me, and the best I was able to come up with seemed to be to rename them, but then, after the first time, I could no longer purge any of them. I did not know about this Style library manager, and probably would never know about it because, honestly, there is so much darn bloatware under Autodesk in the start menu, I decided to quit looking at all the stuff my bosses got sold that I will never, ever, ever ever ever, need.

Thanks again.