Our best option is to have it alway's in memory when inventor launches. Almost every project has this part name - drawing name configuration. The copy pasting is done by the windows explorer. We do belief this still is the fastest solution. All our projects are one manned. So.. no vault, no parts loggin in or loggin out, no keeping up "who did which revision" (we only have two engineers). Just using a fixed library directory with subdirs, and with a nice and simple naming code, library parts can easily be found, added or changed. (Customer requirements do change a lot.)
- make projectfolder B with project B.ipj
- make new B.iam
- copy past A.ipt and A.idw from the library into the projectfolder (can be up to 50 different parts per assembly)
- rename part A.ipt and A.idw to B.ipt and B.idw
- change the shape of part B.ipt by adaptivity in the B.iam
- * link B.idw to B.ipt
- print B.idw
The printing bit I've already done by writing a macro that prints all visible idw's at once.
So.. In my opinion an Add-in which when opening B.idw, it links it not to A.ipt, but to B.ipt (which sits in the same dir, but looking throughout the workspace would also be a great option, when in the future we should deside to copy the drawings into a different subdir). And if file not found, inventors native resolution can be used instead. This way, you wouldn't notice the custom resolution. It simly does it's job when needed. (This could be a nice option for autodesk to implement into next releases.)
If you can help off-line with the easy load & launch part, that of course would be appreciated a lot! Thanks
The copy & renaming, we can skip, as this is way to complex to do by macro. That's what I mend by "We definitely not need THAT much code." It also has to work when multiple idw's are opened at once! Else we still need to open the drawings one by one.