Tips and tricks for creating an exploded view

[ClintWestwood]

I am working on pulling apart a large (300+ parts) assembly, and Inventor's presentation environment just seems way too clunky for me. The "Tweak Components" command seems very limited, and I am spending most of my time going through and clicking on individual parts. Once I finally select all the parts I want moved, I move them and then realize that I missed a screw or something small, and I have to go back and fix it. 

Maybe I'm not the only one with these frustrations, or (most likely) maybe I'm doing it the hard way. Does anyone have any good suggestions or tips for working with Inventor's presentation environment? 

[blair]

I do use the "Sort Components" in the IAM file. This at least sorts parts in the Browser by Part Number. It does help with selecting the components but it's clunky at best.

[Curtis_Waguespack · Accepted solution]

Hi ClintWestwood,

One tip that you might or might not already be aware of, is to change the browser view to Tweak View or Sequence View, and then you can add components to the tweaks you've already created, as well as move components from one tweak action to another, or change the order of tweaks:

http://help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2014/ENU/?guid=GUID-5BBEA4A5-452D-4676-8D16-40E503FBE846

The other thing I find myself doing a lot is selecting all of the components I want to tweak, then creating the first tweak by dragging them all in the direction of the tweak, then hold the CTRL key to remove one component (that I want to "leave behind"), then drag the rest to create the next tweak, then then hold the CTRL key to remove then next component, then drag the rest to create the next tweak, repeat and rinse, etc. ...

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[rdyson]

Picking sub-assemblies in the browser will select all the subs parts

[ClintWestwood]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I especially like the Tweak View in the browser which allows me to change the distances of my previous "tweaks". I still think the presentation environment is much more clunky than it could be, but I will learn to live with it I guess.