Pet Peeves in Inventor 2013!

[trumpy81]

GDay All,

Firstly, I'd like to say that 2013 is a big improvement from 2012 and generally speaking I love it to death, except for the following annoyances and I just have to vent. These annoyances have been with me for quite some time, in previous versions, but I've been too busy 'dealing' with them to bother typing about them. 2013 is so nice otherwise that I just can't hold it in any longer, sorry guys.

Keep in mind that most of the work I do in Inventor is for one-off parts and they are usually drawn using 2.5D rather than full 3D techniques. Therefore, my parts usually contain lots of sketches and operations.

Anyhow, on to the peeves in 2013.

1. The mini-toolbars. I find them to be totally redundant, in most cases, and I would love to turn them off completely, but as yet, I haven't found a way to do that? You should have the option to have either the mini-toolbars or the full dialogs, NOT both. Although you can 'fix' the mini-toolbar location, it doesn't always honour that postition.

2. Constraints, when sketching a line that intersects a circle's center point it used to automatically create a constraint between the two, but now it doesn't. This can be both good and bad but I'd like to have it back even if it's an option.

3. When modifying existing geometry a lot of the time contraints in other operations, often not related to the current operation, will lose their connectivity for no apparent reason. This can be frustrating to say the least and when redefining sketches, it will often leave 3 or 4 copies of the previous fixed geometry that can be a real pain to clean up, particularly when the old lines contrain themselves on top of the new lines. You never know which line is the new one and which lines are old. Thank gawd for undo ... lol

4. When in assembly mode and constraining parts to each other sometimes weird things happen. EG: Constraining part A to part B will cause part C to fly off into space even though part C has no constraints to either A or B. Inventor Pro 2012 was particularly bad for that, but it seems to have calmed down a bit in 2013, although it has appeared once or twice so far.

5. Some parts when only partially constrained, can NOT be moved as though they have been grounded and even when adding the final contraints those constraints fail because the part remains locked in that position. It appears as though constraints intended for one part are being applied, incorrectly, to the other part/s.

6. Dimensioning, trying to add a radius dimension is difficult enough, having to do the left/right mouse button dance, but now we have to find a **** submenu as well. Have the programmers lost their minds? Things are supposed to get easier, NOT harder! Why can't we have a simple checkbox in the 'Edit Dimensions' dialog, it would make life so much easier!

7. Can we please have an undo command when dimensioning that doesn't cancel the tool? Sometimes you select the wrong point to dimension from and it's not always obvious until after the dimension has been made, but to change it, you have to exit the dimension command, delete the dimension and then enter the dimension command again. Having an undo command in the context menu that doesn't cancel the dimension tool would help save a little time here.

8. When trimming lines in sketch mode, sometimes the dimensions for that line, ie: distance from other lines, angles etc... disappear, they shouldn't! Only the length dimension should change, not it's position in space, we're trimming not creating a new line.

9. When, undoing a line or other sketch operation using CRTL-Z it always cancels the tool you were using, why is it so?

10. When repairing constraints, do we really have to keep 'accept'ing the second dialog? It's bad enough that we have to jump through hoops to edit broken constraints without being bombarded with another dialog that does very little but annoy you.

11. When closing a project that we have just saved, do we really have to save it again? Another annoying and unneeded dialog ... grrrrrrr

12. With 'No New Sketch' on the 'Part' tab selected in options, whenever you choose the YZ plane to sketch on, it rotates that plane 90deg to the right, or if you select the XZ plane it rotates the plane 180deg and selecting the XY plane presents the plane the correct way round, why does this happen? I can't see any reason for it?

Ok, that's my rave over with for now. I have probably missed a few annoyances, but these are at the top of my list. I hope the powers that be can fix at least some of them.

[prachu]

Completely agree with #10, especially if there are a lot of them. Sometimes it seems like it would be better to just delete all of the bad ones and start over and it really shouldn't be that complicated. Something similar happens when you have a bunch of dimensions in a drawing that need to be re attached to the correct point.

[karthur1]

4.  I think 2011's assemble command done that too.  I use constrain 99.9% of the time... the other .1% my parts are grounded... the balance is when I use the assemble command. : )  To keep the parts from flying around, I think you have to pick the part that's already constrained first (or it mayb second, cant remember).

5.  I hope this is just some isolated incident.  I have saw this a few times in 2010.  Only way I could correct it was to rebuild the entire assembly.

6. Agreed!

7. Cancel does exit the command, but SPACEBAR will get you right back into it.

I'd like to add one....

13.  Does the Zoom Previous command have to remember every-friggin click of the mouse wheel when I zoom in/out.  They had it right in ONE release of Inventor.. then they took it out.  I complained immediately when they took it out, but it is not back yet.  I know "Inventor is not Autocad", but at least Autocad had got this right.

[trumpy81]

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@karthur1 wrote:

7. Cancel does exit the command, but SPACEBAR will get you right back into it.

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Thanks for tip. I never knew that spacebar would return you to the previous command. That's worth remembering 😉

[SBix26]

... and the D key is a shortcut for the dimension tool-- if I have picked the wrong point somewhere in the process of placing a dimension, I simply hit the D key, which cancels the current dimension and restarts the tool ready to do it correctly.

[DavidKuhlmann]

If the dimension has not been placed, using the backspace key will de-select the most recent object selected and allow a new object to be selected without ending the dimension command.   Using the backspace key twice will de-select both objects selected and allow selection of new objects for the dimension without ending the command.

I am using 2011, perhaps the newer versions are different.

David

[dan_inv09]

I agree with 13 - zoom previous could be a useful tool but a the way it is now it is just an annoyance.

As far as, what was it 12? I think that z is out when looking at the x-y plane so, even though the absolute coordinates mean absolutely nothing to the users, it spins so that positive is to the right and/or up.

[trumpy81]

Thanks guys!! I didn't know there were so many ways to bring back the dimension tool. I must confess though, I'm NOT a big keyboard shortcut user. I like to play with my moose ... lol

[IvanoSimonetto4519]

Likwise with above, my experience has been mostly positive so far, but there are a few things that have changed in a negative way.

Right now I'll add one, and i'd be more than happy to have it pointed out that I have a setting wrong rather than a 2013 change.

3d sketches in parts are no longer able to be adaptive. In the at least the last 2 previous versions this was not the case as I was able to project geometry into my adaptive part whilst editing it in the assembly it is adaptive in.

My settings are the same as the last 2 versions where I was able to do this, so if there is a new setting that I can't find that I need to be aware of please let me know.

Best regards