Short cuts for large assemblies

[Kyle.Sullivan]

Hello, 

I have been creating assemblies with around 70-150 individual componets rather frequently and am curious if anyone has any short cuts that can speed up the process. 

One thing that would drastically speed up my work flow is after every contraint I place, I can simply hit the enter key on my keyboard(better yet my SpaceMousePro) and the contraint would be applied so I can move right along to the next. As it is now for me, hitting the enter key does nothing. I must move the cursor over to the 'apply' button or 'ok' button, click and move on. When only placing a couple contraints this is fine- but once you have a large number of components, with each having three or more contraints, it becomes more and more cumbersome. 

So, my question is-does anyone have a better work around? Or any other ideas to help the work flow speed up? 

Any input would be great! 

Thanks, 

Kyle

[brendan.henderson · Accepted solution]

In the Customise Buttons of the Inventor 3DxInventor program you can assign any of the buttons of the SpaceMouse to whatever command you want. I just tested this by making button 6 = Apply and tested that on an assembly. Works perfectly.

You don't say what version of Inventor you're using. I think from 2013 till current there is the Assemble tools as an alternative to the Constraints.

[Kyle.Sullivan]

Thanks for your help Brendan. 

I had tried this before but couldn't seem to get it to work. Now it is working great. I am using Inventor2014. 

One note that is more of an issue with 3Dconnexion is, there are 6 different 'apply' comands, and I had to go through the first three before I found the one that worked while placing contraints. Always thought this was odd, but I finally got it to work. 

Also find the same issue with multiple 'delete' comands, so now my space mouse will only delete during certain instances. But, regardless the spacemouse is still a huge time saver.