Design Checker: Useful or Annoying?

[LT.Rusty]

Seems like it should be a good idea, but it's giving me a lot of modeling failure warnings that make absolutely no sense.

For instance, see the attached part.  Design Checker has determined that the corner fillets are actually buried features that don't actually modify the part shape and are probably unnecessary.  How does that in any way make sense?  Oddly, that wasn't even the feature I was expecting to get an error on - I was expecting the extrusion to be the error.  On my original part (proprietary data, of course) I had a set of 3 extrusions that made a fairly complex profile, rounded the corners, added draft, and then split into 2 solids, and at that point all three extrusions became flagged as buried features.

I've come across a few things like this.  In another file (I can't share that one, and I don't have time to gin up a suitable non-proprietary version)  I created a rib, patterned it, and then used Extrude-Cut to get rid of some parts that hung out over the edge of a curved section of my model.  This Extrude Feature, that creates like 50 new faces, is similarly described as buried.

So. 

There do appear to be some good things about Design Checker - I like being able to see right off if I've got unused sketches or something - but from what I can tell it doesn't discriminate really well when it comes to some things.

Anyone else tried this yet? 

[MingweiGao]

Hello, thanks for reporting this issue. I took a look at your model and you are right – the error should not be reported. I already logged a defect(1505457) in our internal defect tracking system and our development team will to do some investigations about it. If you have more datasets with the similar problem, can you share them to me(Mail: Mingwei.gao@autodesk.com) and this will help us much to resolve it. Thanks in advance!

[LT.Rusty]

Thank you!  Check your email - I sent you two other .IPT's that have this same behavior. 

At first I thought it had something to do with multiple solids, but one of the files that I sent you only has one solid body.  It does have some surface bodies, though, so there may still be something going on there.  I don't know.

Hope you're able to figure something out with it, though!

[YuhanZhang]

In the DesignChecker, the Buried Features check will detect if a part feature(except DecalFeature and ClientFeature) has no faces, if no it will regard it as a buried feature. As an assistant tool, DesignChecker will help to detect if a design has anything that is not following the checks/rules, but a user can determine if a check/rule is useful for his design and then decide if enable the check. And even the DesignChecker reports an error, if users regard it as designed users can use Acknowledge Fail command in context menu to accept the "failure".

About the data your attached, I think here is an API defect for the FilletFeature.Faces, after the FaceDraftFeature, the FilletFeature has all its four faces invisible, so FilletFeature.Faces should now return no faces at all, I logged this issue.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused by the usage of DesignChecker, if any more questions or problems please let me know.

[Anonymous]

In answer to the original question....

I find it really useful.

I do quite a bit of checking work for our development engineers who collectively seem to have the habit of leaving sketches under constrained. This tool picks that up for me and saves me opening every sketch in every part to check them manually.

It took me a little while to get the settings right for me and I do find myself accepting a few 'errors' but I cant see how this sort of software could possibly work correctly for everyone. There are just too many variations in what Inventor is used for for this to be able to cover them all.

Certainly saves me time but understand why some people really wouldnt get on with it at all.

[LT.Rusty]

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@YuhanZhang wrote:

In the DesignChecker, the Buried Features check will detect if a part feature(except DecalFeature and ClientFeature) has no faces, if no it will regard it as a buried feature. As an assistant tool, DesignChecker will help to detect if a design has anything that is not following the checks/rules, but a user can determine if a check/rule is useful for his design and then decide if enable the check. And even the DesignChecker reports an error, if users regard it as designed users can use Acknowledge Fail command in context menu to accept the "failure".

About the data your attached, I think here is an API defect for the FilletFeature.Faces, after the FaceDraftFeature, the FilletFeature has all its four faces invisible, so FilletFeature.Faces should now return no faces at all, I logged this issue.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused by the usage of DesignChecker, if any more questions or problems please let me know.

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I know how to acknowledge the failures.  Check with Mingwei, look at the data set that I emailed.  It's not just the fillets that are coming up as buried.  In one part, it's showing Extrude-Cut features as buried, when you can clearly see the faces that it creates.  In another, this one a miltiple solid body part, it's showing just about everything before the split that creates the multiple bodies as buried.

It's not just drafts and fillets.

[Maxim-CADman77]

Lets discuss some more things here - http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-customization/automatic-check-of-inventor-design-perspectives...