Inventor 2014 - NPT Tap Drill Sizes, and Counterbored Tapered Thread

[allee]

I realize that there are a number of older posts on the tapered thread tap drill subject, but none of the ones I was able to find seemed to be formally resolved...

It would be great if the NPT tap drill sizes in Inventor could be updated to match the basic ANSI (formerly Briggs) standard; the current Inventor NPT tap drill sizes seem to be a mix of Whitworth (British Standard) and others. 'Machinery's Handbook' gives a list of tap drill sizes for pipe taps 1/8" - 6".

As has been mentioned in other posts, tap drill sizes can be modified in the design data thread spreadsheet, but I would really rather not have to go through this process...

To this point, we have just been working around the incorrect sizes and making the appropriate drawing corrections when applicable. However, if say for a 1/8 NPT thread, I manually correct the hole note to Ø11/32 from Ø5/16, the hole graphically still shows as Ø5/16. This is not a huge issue, but it would be nice if the hole were also graphically correct. 

Also related to tapered thread holes, but not the tap drills...

Is there a reason that it is not possible to create a counterbored hole with a tapered thread? In the hole dialogue box, the tapered hole option is grayed out when a counterbore style hole is selected; however, it is possible to create a spotfaced hole with a tapered thread. In my mind, as far a modeling and programming goes, a counterbore and a spotface are pretty much the same thing, so it is strange that one hole style can be taper threaded and the other cannot. 

In my case, a 'recessed' tapered thread is particularly useful for creating recessed grease ports; for the most part we use standard 1/8 NPT grease fittings. I would like to create this type of feature in a single command (so as a single model tree feature), that can be annotated in a single default drawing note.

As a work-around for not being able to use the counterbore option, I have been using the spotface command; the only drawback here, is that when you annotate the hole in an .idw, the tap drill hole depth is given as the depth from the spotface surface, rather than the starting surface. To work around this, I have just been manually modifying and rearranging the the hole note to suit.

Does anyone have any other thoughts here? Or are there other posts somewhere that I should read?

Perhaps both of these issues can be added to the Inventor wish-list.

Thanks,

Al

[4donwan4]

There has been some internal development cases logged for this issue. At the present time they are aware of the issue and investigating it.

Regards,

Don

[allee]

Sounds good.

Thanks for the response!

Al

[karthur1]

Can you keep us updated with any developments with this.  I would like the NPT holes to show correctly in the ipt AND have the correct tap note on the idw.  I have edited the thread.xls to show the correct tap drill size, but now the holes does not appear properly in the ipt.

Thanks