Highlight Window in an .ipn?

[Anonymous]

I am using Inventor 2009 to work on an assembly with several thousand parts. When I am working on the standard assembly and need to select a large number of parts in the same area I click and drag a window across them to highlight all of the parts simultaneously.
When I put the assembly into an .ipn (explosion) the program will not let me highlight in such a manner. I must pick each part by specifically clicking on it, or finding it in the model tree and selecting it. This consumes a HUGE amount of time, and my speed could be increased 10 fold if I could use a highlight window.
Is there any way to turn on a feature that will allow me to drag a window and highlight in an .ipn? Edited by: SAThompson on Mar 9, 2010 9:05 PM

[Anonymous]

if your IPN is made up of many subassemblies, you may very simply select
each subassembly from the model browser to tweak it in the direction you
need to go. This is standard practice when working with assemblies.

On the other hand, if you have created all of those components at the
top level assembly, then you have dug your own grave. Start looking at
creating top-level assemblies with lots of subassemblies. In this way,
you will reduce the size of the file significantly, improve performance,
and make it easy to multi-select when making a presentation.

If you need to convert your top-level assembly into multiple
subassemblies, check into the Demote command.
--
Dennis Jeffrey, Autodesk Inventor Certified Expert

Subscribe to the free "The Creative Inventor Magazine now available at:
http://teknigroup.com/CI-Subscribe-Login.asp

[Anonymous]

sorry, I missed attaching the image.
--
Dennis Jeffrey, Autodesk Inventor Certified Expert

Subscribe to the free "The Creative Inventor Magazine now available at:
http://teknigroup.com/CI-Subscribe-Login.asp

[vonchillis]

I just installed the new 2011 and noticed that Autodesk still has not added a WINDOW selection in presentations. Our assemblies are made up of subassemblies, but these sub assemblies need to be screwed together with 1 screw, 1 lock washer, and on flat washer at each tie point.
I went to the Autodesk University several years ago and mentioned the same thing to one of the lead Inventor people and I guess I am not one of the power users any longer. Been doing PC board design too long.

Willie in Florida

[jhedro]

I would have to agree with vonchillis. I am working with large assemblies that are created with sub-assemblies, but all of these subs have fasteners, o-rings, retainers, etc.. The whole engineering department here complains about this same thing.

My question is "why?" Why can't there be a selection window in an ipn?? There's one in an iam. There's one in an idw. Is it that difficult to include one in the ipn? I really can't see where it would hurt to have it. This is one of the most annoying things about Inventor to me and no matter how many people question this, nothing has changed. What happened to listening to the customer??

[cmcconnell]

This functionality was missed when they added window select to the assembly environment. I do not think there have been any improvements to the ipn environment since then (its been a few years now).

[vonchillis]

Just loaded Inventor 2015 and still do not have a window command in presentations!!!!

WOW

[jhedro]

Dennis,

Your message says you are an Inventor Certified Expert. Can you explain, why even after all of the complaints and feedback from users about the lack of a window selection in an .ipn, there still isn't a window selection in 2015?? Is this some impossible task for the programmers? We're still using 2009 and are in the process of upgrading to 2015. We had assumed that in 6 versions they have surely fixed all the annoyances that users have mentioned. Maybe since we're making such a leap, we should just get Solildworks. I know they listen to their customers.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Hi jhedro,

Dennis was a valued member of these discussion forums, but he is no longer with us. He passed away a few years ago.

As for your comments concerning the IPN improvments, it might be better to add them to this IdeaStation idea, along with a kudo to show your support for this idea:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Inventor-IdeaStation/Window-Select-in-Presentations/idi-p/3684114

As well as this one:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Inventor-IdeaStation/Bring-the-presentation-environment-up-to-speed/id...

Note that both of these ideas have been marked accepted by the Autodesk Inventor development team, so hopefully that means they are working on this as we type.

If you have other ideas about how to improve Inventor, you can share your them with the Development Team by creating an IdeaStation idea, and/or adding comments and kudos to existing ideas:
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Inventor-IdeaStation/idb-p/v1232

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

[jhedro]

Curtis,

Thank you for the info. Sorry to hear about Dennis.

It's good to hear that there may be some work being done on this issue. Vonchillis wrote that 2015 didn't have it and it popped up in my email today. So, I thought I'd follow up on the thread too.

I'll visit those links you posted.

Thanks

jhedro