Add the Region, Date, Time format to the Project File rather than in the O/S

[blair]

If you are working of projects for different countries and regions, it would be nice to have the Date format read from the Project File rather than the O/S. Currently you need to change the date format, you need to change your location within the operating system. It would be nice to have these options in the Project File.

Currently if you are in Canada they use DD-MM-YY and if your are in the US, it would be MM-DD-YY. It's fine once the number are equal and greater than 13. 01-12-14 could be the 1st of December or Januay 12th depending what side of the 49th you are on.

Switching the date in the O/S also messes up other dates on your system as well.

[leblanc2024]

Hello Blair,

I agree!  An alpha month would be great kind of like the best before dates on products.  (i.e. 03-MR-14)

This would reduce the confusion for all.

Regards,

Ivon

[bobvdd]

Blair,

This is all good and well if you exchange files through Pack and Go (which contains the project file) or when you can set project file standards inside your company. But what if you exchange individual files without inclusion of an ipj? Would it not be better then to store the preferred date and time format inside the file itself?  Like in the document settings of the template file?

Cheers

Bob

[blair]

Al sorts of variables,

Spoiler

[Anonymous]

.

This has been a problem since at lease R5.3, over a decade. 

We shouldn't need to change the date format in the Operating System and then mess everything else. 

The Date Format could be done within the Options dialogue and some users might need the ability to change it for specific Projects, depending upon Client requirements etc.

However it is done, it needs to be done.

[janelson33]

Okay, first and foremost, I couldn't agree more with this feature's need. It's silly that a CAD software that is this mature isn't working on stuff that truly makes you a better designer or engineer, ie implementing standardized templates that are already in agreement with ISO, ANSI/ASMI or DIN design standards, as they all exist and are not a secret.

Secondly, it is my belief that US or Metric templates should be evolved more, as hinted at above. There are several accepted world standards now such as ISO, JIS, ANSI/ASME, DIN, etc. yet Inventor's templates pay no mind to that?!

If I click an English Inch Units part, drawing or whatever, I should expect ANSI/ASME features in the files as default. This of course relates to the idea of fixing the dates, as many of the other standard will have a differing, required date format! Why they hell does no one at Autodesk understand this crap? Why do they make their team waste so much time setting up these default file templates, which don't even conform to a certain, relevant worldwide spec??

To evolve that rant, if not given the option in the master Application Options, then make it editable in the default part template, or Document Options. Just practice due diligence, if your programmers have spent the time to make an English Part Template (in), then for ****'s-sake, evolve the whole MF template to the ANSI standard, OR tree out the English Part Template (in) to select from ISO, DIN, ASNI, or any other relevant standard. Same for Metric of course!

By adding that standards-selectable, default template feature, Autodesk can create more jobs internally, deliver more value, and create new training classes because there will be a need for certain engineers and designers to do stuff right, and certain ones should want to know how!

[blair]

Thanks for your support is this issue as well as expanding on the current short comings as well as identifying other features that should be included as well. 

[Supa_Designer]

The format should be selectable for each variable in text fields and tables!

[CStilesCARE]

I'm still stuck on Inv. 2019 (hoping to update to 2023 soon!) so I don't know if this issue has been solved in later releases, but considering the idea is still posted, I assume not.

I agree with @Supa_Designer on this. As far as I'm concerned, date formats should be controllable individually, with the ability to control them as groups or overall as desired.  Like with a date style maybe?

Yeah, why don't we have Date Styles yet? That could be one way to give control on format, with an override option for individual fields / instances. You could create various styles and include them in object defaults / design standards.

Seems pretty straight forward, but would something like that be difficult to implement?

[blair]

Unfortunately, no. Inventor still looks to the O/S for it's date and format.

[CStilesCARE]

@blair  Thanks for the update.

Yeah, I just ran into this issue when revising an older drawing. The date formats were changing and I didn't know why until I looked it up online. 

Not happy that I have to change my system settings just to keep the correct format on my drawings. That seems a little absurd. Like if Inventor still relied on system font settings to set text size in drawings, or limited your "User Name" (i.e. default initials and such) to just be whatever your system user name was...

It's one of those things that didn't bother me until I realized it was a thing. Now I see it in a bunch of the work I did previously, and it bothers me that I can't fix it in a way that won't be immediately broken by the next person who opens the file (if their system settings are different).

[Supa_Designer]

The format could also be part of the file settings.

Ussing the format of the OS is the worst idea.

[wayne.helleyY67EK]

I'm based in the UK but we are doing some drawings for a US client.  Having the option to change the format or bring in the year, month and day as separate properties would be very useful

[mu1]

Is it that hard to fix this?

[CStilesCARE]

@mu1  I suppose only the software developers would know with any accuracy how hard of a fix it is, but I would argue it's worthwhile regardless, since it makes following formatting requirements much harder than it could be.

I'm using IV 2023.3 now and it's still an issue. 2024 has been out for a little while now though, and I don't know if it's been fixed there or not. Maybe someone using it can say otherwise?

Only thing I can think of for a work-around right now might be to add one or more custom text iProperties to all drawings (and/or models, if desired) and use iLogic to convert dates into your desired format and spit it out into said custom iProperties.

After that, you'd have all date references (like in title blocks) reference that custom iProperty instead of the actual date iProperties.

...which is a lot more work than it should be to get a properly formatted date these days...

[infoW9XPC]

@CStilesCAREI think this is probably the best solution so far. It's a bit annoying to have to go through to the custom field to update this, but it's much easier than updating every date manually so that it's in the correct format like we had to do before. 

Paying thousands of dollars a year for software that essentially does nothing other than making this task more efficient (albeit some of these tasks are extremely more efficient than manual methods) leaves a bad taste in my mouth when people have been asking for a simple update for so long now, but I think that's just the nature of software and large corporations these days.

If I'm also going to be the only one (or maybe one of a very few) working on the drawing, I'll often use another field in iProperties that I wasn't using for anything else as the date field to save a few clicks. Drawings also only go out in PDF format when I'm cutting those corners as well.